Reinforced Chamber
by Lupine Horror
Summary: Sequel to Reinforced Magic. One year over and down with, but another now comes around. Now with Loki and Isis at his side as well as Reinforce, what will Harry Potter make of his second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? This is fan fiction, I only own the plot.
1. Uminari City

AN: Okay, here is the first chapter of Reinforced Chamber, a sequel to Reinforced Magic. I know it's not the most imaginative name out there, but give me a break! In the last twenty four hours, I have written more than forty thousand words, dammit! Anyway, this chapter will start to draw in some of the more Nanohaverse stuff and characters, and the first chapter is actually in Uminari City itself!

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN (Who is apparently beginning to feel like a monkey with a typewriter!)

Chapter 1 – Uminari City

Harry Potter, the saviour of Wizarding Britain, the Boy-Who-Lived, and so many other things that he couldn't be bothered remembering, appeared in an out of the way alley near to Charing Cross, where the famous Wizarding pub, the Leaky Cauldron was located.

Preceding his appearance, was a large triangular symbol made of light. The triangle was a blackish-purple colour, and had some sort of designs within it. After that, three people appeared within the triangle, one of them being Harry Potter himself, and the other two being his familiars, Isis and Loki.

Harry, differently to how he had been before Hogwarts and even recently, wore his hair in a ponytail. The scarred left side of his face was fully visible, something that no longer bothered him. He seemed more confident than he had at this point last year, and a fair bit happier too.

He entered the Leaky Cauldron, which was rather empty as everyone was picking up their kids at the station, and hurried through to the other side. Tapping the wall with his wand, the bricks retreated and formed the archway that he remembered from the previous summer.

Not wasting any time, Harry made immediately for the Owl Office, and stepped inside. It was a rather dark and quiet building. Against the far wall were dozens upon dozens of perches on which sat a variety of owls. There some really tiny owls, ones that would fit in palm of your hand, and huge ones, like, really big.

Harry headed off to the counter and the sleepy employee there who looked surprised to see anyone enter the place at all. Stepping up to her, Harry spoke up. "Hello, I would like to rent out a drop box here for the summer, please." He nodded to her politely.

"Hello, sir. Yes, you can rent a drop box if you want. Do you wish to leave it here and retrieve it at a later date, or would you prefer to keep it in a location of your choosing?" She asked.

"Here, please." He told her.

"Very well then sir. I will require your name and magical signature." She reached underneath the counter and brought out a large black box with a blank nameplate on the front of it. "If you would please touch your wand to the nameplate, that will be all that's necessary."

Harry did so, and when the girl turned the box around to get his details for a form, her eyes widened and darted back to Harry. She licked her lips and gulped a little nervously, her eyes flickering between his two familiars which were flanking him.

Isis got a perverted look on her face, and opened her mouth to make an undoubtedly lewd comment. Until Harry stamped on her foot that was. It wasn't like the stamp hurt her, what with her boots being magically reinforced and strengthened, but she got the message and pouted at Harry, eyes wide and nearly begging. He ignored it, having gotten used to her tricks since she'd become his familiar.

"That will be five galleons a month then, sir." The girl told Harry, who gave her fifteen to cover the latter half of June, as well as July and August. Now that that bit of business had been taken care of, Harry headed to the book shop. While in there, he purchased some new books to look at over the Holidays if he ever got bored.

Deciding that it couldn't hurt any, Harry got a shrinking feature added to his trunk, making it and its contents more portable, and also purchased a bottomless bag. It wasn't actually bottomless, just rather large and had an interesting bit of charm work on it that meant items could be retrieved with relative ease.

Deciding to go a little wild, Harry bought plenty of supplies that would usually be used on a camping trip. He bought a small wizarding tent, a small one being one that only had three bedrooms, go figure. He also bought a lot of food, an awful lot of food, and a medium pot of ever-burning fire, so he could make barbecues and things like that.

Once that was done, he headed to Gringotts. He met up with Sharpclaw. After getting the greetings over and done with, Harry asked if everything had been done as he'd asked. He'd sent a letter with Loki a month beforehand, and he hoped that everything had been done.

"Yes, it has, as odd as the request was. We have converted a truly substantial amount of money into pure silver ingots for you and they are all ready to collect. We can go now and retrieve it if you want." Harry agreed to do so, and he followed the goblin to where the silver was waiting for him.

Once there, and after the silver had been admired, Isis and Loki began packing it into Harry's bottomless bag, which had thankfully had a feather-light charm added to it, so it was no heavier than a tin of beans, even with that much silver stuffed inside it.

"Why do you want so much silver?" Sharpclaw asked, shaking his head. "It makes no sense. The only time that goblins really use silver is as an alloy in weapons, not like this. Gold is the metal of money, gold is always the best." He said.

Harry chuckled. "I know that goblins truly adore gold, but I personally prefer silver, and this metal has a purpose other than to be used as a weapon. I will see you again at the end of this month. I will be out of contact for the rest of summer, but there is a drop box for me at the Owl Office."

Sharpclaw dropped the topic, but not before he shook his head and gave a disparaging "Wizards!"

Once all of the silver was put away in his bag, Harry left Gringotts with a fairly cheery, by goblin standards at least, goodbye, and looked for an out of the way corner for him to disappear from. That wasn't exactly difficult, and Harry had soon disappeared along with his familiars, not to be seen in Britain again for a good couple of months.

xxxxx

There was a flash of light and Harry appeared with his two familiars in a place that Reinforce most definitely recognised, Uminari City. Not really paying attention, she barely noticed when Harry ejected her from his body and slid something onto her wrist.

When she did look down, she saw some kind of bracelet. It was like a charm bracelet, one of those that had beads threaded together rather than hanging off of it, and each bead was inscribed with runes. Harry grinned at her and directed her to a convenient nearby pool of water.

She looked into the water and at her reflection, marvelling at how her appearance had changed. It wasn't a massive difference, mostly just the colour of her hair and eyes which were now black and green respectively. Harry stepped aside with Isis and Loki, both of them with their animal-like appendages hidden and looking relatively normal as well.

"The day is yours." Harry said. "Go and do whatever you want to do, I think I'm going to head to the Midori-ya to sample their food myself." Reinforce nodded her head mutely, not really sure what she should be doing, and began to wander off in a random direction.

Behind her back, Harry watched her go with a smile on his face. He knew that Reinforce, for some reason, had been very reluctant to come and meet Hayate. Now though, with a different appearance, she might feel up to at least speaking to her, and that could only be good.

"Come on, you two, let's see what the Midori-ya's cakes taste like and if they're as good as they're supposed to be." Harry said to his two familiars heading the way he knew the café was in, despite never having been here in his life before, memories were weird like that.

xxxxx

"Master Hayate." Reinforce murmured, tears streaking down her face.

She was sat on a roof and looking at the house she knew her former master had lived in, that she still lived in with the Wolkenritter. Through the window, she could see the large blue wolf form of Zafira, and through another she could see Vita and Signum seemingly arguing about something.

In the kitchen window, she could see Hayate trying to teach Shamal how to cook. All of them were a family, and she was so, so glad to see it. She knew she had no part of that family, no matter how much she would wish otherwise. Oh, she would be welcome, she was sure of that, but no, she was starting to make her own family now, with Harry, Isis and Loki.

She had been reluctant to come back here, to where she had both good and bad memories. It had not been far from here where that battle had occurred, her corrupted self versus the heroes of the tale. Knowing that, willingly or not, she had been that bad guy was a rather bitter pill to swallow, but she knew it was true all the same.

Maybe... maybe saying hello wouldn't be so bad. Her eyes flickered down to her wrist, where that crude-looking and hand made bracelet rested, and wondered just how long Harry had taken to make it. She also wondered how he'd kept it secret from her, the person that knew him best.

No, she wouldn't do that. Hayate was starting to have her own life now, she was out of her wheelchair and everything, and she looked so happy too. Reinforce didn't want to disrupt what Hayate had going for her, and could she even do that if she wanted to?

Hayate had her Wolkenritter, her friends, and the TSAB all looking out for her. Harry, her new master, had just her and two fairly recently created familiars. Harry didn't even have a stable home life now that he'd permanently left the Dursleys, and good riddance to bad rubbish there, so it could be said that Harry needed her more, despite how independent both he and Hayate were.

Oh? It looked like the Yagami family was going out somewhere. Reinforce descended to street level and became to discretely tail them. An advantage she had over them was that she knew them, so she knew how each one looked for threats, and how to avoid being noticed by them.

xxxxx

"Any particular reason you wanted us all to go to Nanoha's café right now, Hayate?" Shamal asked the young girl. The two of them had been in the kitchen, the younger girl trying to teach her how to cook without poisoning people, and she'd suddenly stiffened before declaring they were all heading for the Midori-ya.

"I don't know." Hayate replied. "I just had this feeling, you know? Like something really important was going to happen." She shrugged. "There's also the fact they do awesome cakes!" Hayate licked her lips. Since she now no longer had to go about the place in a wheelchair and since what had happened the winter before last, she had decided to live life to the fullest and try to always be happy.

"Really?" Signum asked with an arched eyebrow. "And it has nothing to do with the interesting boy that Nanoha saw, does it?" She asked. Apparently something about this boy had warranted Nanoha telepathically contacting Hayate and Fate, so Signum was understandably wary.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Hayate replied, her eyes wide and her lips in a pout, looking like a poster girl for innocence. "I'm sure that's just a coincidence, really it is. I am most definitely not curious about whoever has caught Nanoha's attention, especially seeing as it's not Fate that did so."

Zafira, in puppy form, snorted telepathically. "I really doubt that Nanoha is looking at a boy in _that_ way, mistress, and even if she was, it's no business of ours. If she really is looking at him that way, though, she is fully capable of taking care of herself and I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate interference."

"It's too late for that." A voice off to the side said. Coming down a side road and joining up with the Yagami family was Fate Testarossa Harlaown, adopted daughter of Lindy Harlaown, and close friend of Nanoha Takamachi. "Mom has already started researching him."

"She's hacked into Earth's computer systems, didn't she?" Shamal asked, shaking her head.

Fate winced a little and nodded. An Admiral, even if they were considering retirement, really shouldn't be hacking into any systems, not even those of an unadministrated world.

"I'm betting she didn't find anything." Hayate said. "If there really was something, finding it that easily would definitely spoil the plot! No, if there was something, we would not find out about it until his diabolical plan was already in motion and the villain will tell us it all in a monologue!"

Signum sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "Hayate, real life is not like books or manga. Something like that is simply absurd, and I really don't want to know why you keep trying to equate the two. Please don't try and look for something that isn't there, remember what happened two months ago?"

Hayate winced slightly, remembering a certain incident that involved large amounts of white paint, an unstable ladder, the girls' locker room and a high jump bar. "That was a complete accident! How was I to know he was simply checking the building for structural stability?"

"You shouldn't have assumed he was trying to build an army of warrior mice in the ceiling to steal all of the girls panties." Signum replied, not quite believing what words were coming out of her mouth. Hayate had certainly become more energetic since she'd gotten out of her wheelchair, it was a shame her mind had done the same.

"Still, I'm sure something is up with this boy!" Hayate declared, folding her arms and nodding her head.

"Hayate." An exasperated Signum shook her head at her master.

"Actually..." Fate began to say a little hesitantly, twiddling her fingers in front of her.

"Wait! I was right? But it's too early to find out the bad guy's secrets!" Hayate cried. Her knights merely looked at Fate and waited for her to explain what Lindy had found so far.

"His name is Harry James Potter, and he's from England. Mom found a file on him with the police archives, but he's not a criminal. A year and a half ago, his cousin poured acid over his head which left him horribly scarred. The Dursley family, his guardians, were investigated, but no charges ended up sticking. Abuse was suspected, but not proven." Fate said, a flash of anger appearing in her wine red eyes.

"Dursleys? I thought you said his name was Potter?" Signum asked.

"His parents died when he was fifteen months old, the cause of death is unknown. Petunia Dursley nee Evans is his mother's sister." Fate explained. "His aunt and uncle took him in, seeing as he had no other relatives." Her brow furrowed for a moment. "His father might have had relatives, but Mom couldn't find any records of him prior to his marriage to Lily Evans."

"So he's had a bad home life." Hayate said softly. "What's he doing in Japan, are his relatives with him?" She asked.

"No." Fate replied. "There's something else odd as well. He has a record of going to school up until the end of primary school. After that, he just disappears. Him turning up now is the first thing that's happened since August last year. Mom thinks someone in the government knows what's going on, kids can't just disappear like that without questions being asked."

"Oh, so there's some mystery involved too, is there?" Hayate asked.

Signum sighed. "I'm sure you're about to go off and harass him now, just don't take it too far. We've arrived by the way." She indicated the Midori-ya which they were now stood outside of. Hayate led the way in, and she could instantly tell which boy Nanoha had been talking about.

He was sat by himself at a table and seemed to be enjoying one of the Midori-ya's cakes with a smile on his face. He seemed to notice her come in, and turned to look at her, letting her see the left half of his face which she hadn't seen coming in due to him sitting sideways on to the door.

For just a moment, Hayate was frozen in place. It wasn't the scars that caught her attention, but his hair and left eye. The streak of silver amongst the black and the red eye, both reminded her of someone else. The red was exactly the right shade, same for the silver.

"Hello, there. Is there something I can help you with?" The boy asked in accented Japanese.

"Hehehe." Hayate laughed a little, rubbing the back of her head, caught off guard by the resemblance he had with Reinforce. Heck, even his features seemed a little like reinforces, the angles of his face, the small twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and several other things.

"Excuse Hayate, please." Shamal said. "Do you mind if we sit with you?" She asked, looking around the café and seeing how busy the place was. "I'm Shamal, by the way. This here is Signum, this one is Vita, and the wolf pup is Zafira. We're the Yagami family. This here is Fate Harlaown, a friend of Hayate's."

"By all means, take a seat. I'm meeting up with some people later, but they don't seem to be here yet. I'm Harry by the way, Harry Potter." Harry told them. Signum paused and took another look at this Harry person, something struck her as off about him, nothing bad, just a little unusual.

Hayate and her knights sat down and ordered some things to eat from Nanoha's mother who was at the counter. Hayate didn't actually talk much at first, her eyes flickering repeatedly back to Harry's red eye and silver streak in his hair. Vita was the one who decided to be blunt about it and ask.

"Hey, why do you have silver in your hair and why's your eye red?" She asked.

Signum winced at that rather direct question, but Harry didn't seem bothered by it, he seemed more amused than anything. He smiled at Vita as he replied.

"In all honesty, I do not know. It happened during the incident that gave me these scars." Harry indicated the left side of his face. "No one has been able to come up with a reason that it happened, but I don't mind it. I actually quite like the colouring myself."

"So, Harry. You sound English, if your accent is anything to go by, so what brings you to Uminari City?" Shamal asked.

"Nothing much." Harry shrugged. "I'm travelling around for a bit. My school is boarding, so I'm in one place all year round, and I've decided to use the summer to get around a bit, see new things and so on. There were some interesting things happening here a year or two ago, did you know?"

Ah, yes, the results of the Jewel Seed incident and the Book of Darkness débâcle, that had made the news after all. The tree that had entangled the city, and the weird weather caused by Fate when she had drawn the Jewel Seeds out of the sea were two of the larger ones for the former.

"Who are you travelling with, family?" Shamal asked kindly, a smile on her face.

"No, I'm not. I... don't have the best relationship with my relatives, and I currently have another guardian. I am travelling with her and two other people I know, Isis and Loki." Harry replied. "I'm sorry if this sounds offensive, but what about you? None of you particularly look like you could be related to each other."

It was true after all, none of the Wolkenritter bore any real resemblance to any of the others or Hayate. "While we weren't born with the same blood, we're a family all the same." It was Shamal that replied. "Hayate does have an uncle that sort of adopted her as well. Gil Graham, and his two girls Aria and Lotte. He lives in England, London actually."

Harry bowed his head. "I intended no offence, and the ones I am travelling with are like my family too, despite the lack of blood we share." 'And species.' Harry thought. "Although, we are trying to curb Isis' more lewd comments, it doesn't help that Loki and one of my professors flirt with each other and try and make the other blush." He shook his head. "Rein is the most sensible one of all of us, she's the one who tries to keep us in line."

The door to the café opened and Reinforce, the illusion still in place, stepped through. Harry smiled, and saw how she seemed to gather her courage and approach the table. "Hey Rein, have you seen where the other two have gone? I haven't seen them in about half an hour."

"No, I haven't. I'm sure they'll turn up before long though, Loki's probably off flirting with someone, and I'm not even going to try and guess what Isis is doing." Rein shook her head and took a seat next to Harry, looking around at everyone who was there. "So, Harry, who are your new friends?"

As Harry introduced the people there, even if Reinforce knew who they were, the others were transfixed by her appearance. They could see a definite resemblance between Harry and this Rein, even aside from the colour of their hair and eyes. That wasn't what had them looking at her like they were though.

The illusion bracelet that Harry had made Reinforce was very crude and basic, so the illusion was also rather crude and basic. The major differences were her hair and eye colour, and that was pretty much it. It was this distinct resemblance to the Reinforce they had known which froze them in place, even her voice was the same!

Once they'd gotten a hold on themselves, they all greeted this Rein woman with smiles, but they were just a little forced. Things were definitely weird with these two, the Wolkenritter could tell that, as could Hayate and Fate. This Harry had a silver streak in his hair and an eye that was the exact same shade as Reinforce's had been, and this Rein woman looked like she could be Reinforce if she dyed her hair and put in some contacts. It was a little bit freaky really.

Something then clicked in Signum's mind, and she narrowed her eyes in thought. Now that she could see this woman's resemblance to Reinforce, and thus Harry's resemblance to Reinforce, she had been about to write off her feeling as just that, her subconscious recognising familiar features, but that wasn't it, that wasn't it at all.

What Signum's mind had clicked onto was the complete lack of surprise that Harry had shown towards them. Actually, it went past just a lack of surprise, when he had first looked at them, there had been something in his eyes, joy? Recognition? Something like that at least.

Telepathically, Signum conveyed her thoughts to Shamal and Zafira. Vita was too blunt to be subtle, and if it was just a coincidence, then she'd rather avoid what Hayate would go through if they got her hopes up. She considered telling Fate too, but decided she'd get in contact with Lindy directly if anything else came up that was suspicious.

Shamal mulled the thoughts over in her head, before she too found something to latch onto. Harry had said that his hair and eye had changed when he got his scars, Fate had said he got those scars the winter before last, the same time that Reinforce had been destroyed. The timing was more than a bit suspicious.

Zafira sniffed the air in his puppy form, and recognised the scent of the woman. He recognised it, and he thought he would have never smelled it again. That woman had exactly the same scent as Reinforce did, and there was a definite similarity in the boy's scent.

They wouldn't say anything right now and cause a scene, but later was a different matter. It wouldn't be difficult to slip the boy a message when they left, and Shamal did have a handbag with her that did have a pen in. She'd scrawl a message across an old receipt and slip it into his pocket. The meeting afterwards, if he turned up, would be most interesting.

xxxxx

That evening, on top of the school that Hayate, Fate and Nanoha attended, Signum, Shamal and Zafira waited for two people to turn up. Hayate had been put to bed, and Vita was staying at home just in case anything happened. The three of them were... concerned about something.

The sound of flapping wings could be heard, and the three of them looked up to see four individuals flying down towards them. One of those figures was Harry Potter, familiar black wings coming from his back. Two of the other figures were unknown to them, but they guessed that these two were the Isis and Loki that Harry had mentioned earlier.

The fourth person was familiar to them, it was Reinforce. The four of them landed in front of Zafira, Shamal and Signum, but made no move to approach. The presumed Loki and Isis merely leaned back against the railing that ran around the edge of the roof.

Reinforce was shifting her weight from foot to foot and staring at her feet. Harry looked at Reinforce with exasperation, before nudging her towards the Wolkenritter. When she didn't move even then, he damn near shoved her into them. Signum caught Reinforce and felt her breath catch in her throat.

Actually touching her was what finally made her realise that this really was happening. It was Shamal that broke down into tears and embraced both Signum and Reinforce tightly. Zafira stepped back and away from the emotional display, and ended up stood next to Harry who was looking at the three of them with a small smile on his face.

"You have no idea how difficult convincing her to come here was." Harry said quietly, shaking his head.

Zafira looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" He asked.

Harry waved a hand towards Reinforce. "She's been so reluctant to come here and see all of you, especially Hayate. She remembers how much trouble she believes she's responsible for, Hayate being confined to a wheelchair only being a part of it. She didn't think that she deserved to come back and see you all." He frowned a bit then. "I also think she feels a little responsible for me too."

Zafira leaned back against the railing next to Harry. "I see. So, what's the story?"

Harry leaned back against the railing as well. "My cousin dumped acid over my head, and Reinforce appeared before me while I was crying. I remember the pain as my skin bubbled and twisted beneath the acid, and I needed to focus on something else, anything, to block it out. I focused on this mysteriously appearing woman."

The two of them watched as Signum, Shamal and Reinforce were all talking about something or other. "Reinforce stayed with me, and taught me magic. My Linker core's weird though, it's a kind of hybrid that's optimised for Belkan and Mid-Childan magic, as well as what we're calling Terran magic, that the magic users of Earth use."

"There are magic users on Earth?" Zafira asked with surprise.

"Yes." Harry replied. "Their magic is extremely varied, but they don't have very large mana reserves. Saying that, they don't really need a lot of mana, due to their spells having such low requirements. I go to a school for magic in Scotland, and the core subjects include things like Transfiguration, Potions, Charms, Defence Against the Dark arts. and things like that."

Harry shook his head and drew his wand. "They don't use devices, and their technology is stuck around the Victorian times, but their magic can do the oddest things. With a wave of this wand and a few words, I could turn a table into a rabbit, change an objects colour or so many other things."

"Change something into a rabbit, really?" Zafira asked sceptically.

Harry just gave him an evil grin and pointed his wand at him. "Lapifors." He said. He'd read up on Japan's magical laws before coming here, and found some things that were better than Britain's, and a fair few things that were worse. One of the better things was that instead of having to be seventeen to freely cast magic, you simply had to complete at least one year of schooling, and not have a black mark on your record.

Their punishments for casting magic in front of or on muggles was far more severe though, but since everyone in Harry's proximity possessed magic themselves, he wouldn't be setting any sensors off. It was just such a shame that there was a massive split in Japan's magical community, there not really being a great deal of interaction between the different races that lived in the country.

"Harry!" Reinforce called out, and Harry turned to see Reinforce glaring at him slightly. Signum and Shamal were too busy watching the blue rabbit that was hopping about around Harry's feet in surprise. He couldn't help it, Harry broke out into laughter.


	2. Summer

AN: And another Chapter here for your reading pleasure. I am really pumping these out at quite the rate, aren't I? I know that things here aren't going as some of you would want, that Harry isn't doing certain things that you think he should, but that's because of Reinforce. Harry's only real link with them all is her, and he won't open up like that until Reinforce is comfortable with them, that's where the hesitancy comes from.

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 2 - Summer

"So how did your little chat with Signum and Shamal go?" Harry asked Reinforce later.

Reinforce sighed. "They understand why I am reluctant to just turn up out of the blue, but they do want me to talk to Hayate at some point. She still thinks about me a lot, apparently, and they're trying to convince me to talk to her, without the illusion this time."

"Why don't you?" Harry asked. "I've been trying to get you to do that since I found out about everything that has happened."

Reinforce sat down heavily next to Harry and sighed. "I can't, Harry, I just can't. It was because of me that she spent so long in a wheelchair, it was because of me that she almost died, it was because of me that this entire planet was at risk of being destroyed."

Tears had started to fall from her eyes, so Harry pulled her into a hug. "Listen to me, please. That's not you, it was never you. The ones responsible for all of that were the idiots who thought it was a good idea to try and alter the Tome's programming, the ones who messed it up, not you."

Harry, looking over Reinforce's shoulder, saw Loki and Isis watching over them as he tried to comfort Reinforce. "You are a good person, Rein. I don't know how many people would willingly be destroyed, as you tried to do, to save other people. You're a hero, especially to me, you saved me." Harry snorted for a moment. "_You _are _my_ knight in shining armour, and I am the damsel in distress."

Reinforce laughed a little at that. "I'll remember you said that." She said.

"You'd better, because I'm not saying it ever again." Reinforce laughed a little at that and calmed down. Isis and Loki came over and joined the hug as well, Isis' hands were not even wandering this time. "Now, do you feel up to talking to Hayate any time soon?"

Reinforce burrowed herself back into the group hug, shaking her head. "I can't, Harry. Don't ask me to do what I simply can't do." She asked of him.

"Very well." Harry said, running his hands through her hair. "I won't force you to do it, but the option is always going to be there for you. Signum, Shamal, and Zafira are willing to keep quiet until you can talk to Hayate yourself. It's a bit of a shame that we can't really get you to a psychiatrist to talk about all of this guilt and responsibility you're feeling."

"Isis!" Reinforce yelled. Oh, it seemed that the unicorn's hands had ended up wandering anyway, could that girl really not stop herself?

xxxxx

Harry had decided to hang around Uminari City for a few more days. There was an administrated planet within range of a personal teleport, and Harry was busy setting things up for the next step of his journey over the summer holidays. Using Loki as an intermediary, and some knowledge that Signum, Shamal and Zafira had been able to get a hold of, Harry managed to convert his silver bars into the appropriate currency for administrated worlds.

He'd also booked himself, Isis, Loki and Reinforce onto a public flight to Mid-Childa. Once he'd done that, Harry had spent some time on both Earth and Cryas, as the administrated world was called, and rather enjoyed his time on both. On Earth, he met the entire group eventually.

Arisa Bannings and Suzuka Tsukimura were alright in Harry's opinion, and they seemed intensely curious about him. From the seemingly random questions they were asking him, he suspected that they were trying to work out whether he was magical like the rest were.

Harry had some fun with that. Seeing as Fate, Nanoha, Hayate, the Wolkenritter and so on were all magical, there was nothing to stop Harry pulling off a few harmless magical pranks on them. Zafira had decided to stay far away from Harry when he got that mischievous smile on his face, well remembering his brief time as a rabbit and not wanting a repeat of the incident.

Surprisingly, Signum was rather receptive of pranks. Her excuse was that, on a battlefield, anything could be a trap, and so developing situational awareness was a very good thing. The sparkle in her eyes made Harry think that she actually did like to pull a few pranks, she just didn't want to admit it.

Nanoha was a... friendly person. This may sound stereotypical, but Harry had labelled her as the 'True Hufflepuff' in his mind. She was very hard-working, friendly, loyal and always say the best in everyone. Harry had decided that simply accepting her friendship was the best idea, he didn't want to end up 'befriended' after all.

Hayate was another cheerful person, but she was _really_ energetic as well. Whenever Reinforce saw her antics, hidden by Harry's illusion bracelet, there was always a smile on her face. Harry thought that, given enough time seeing Hayate like this, Reinforce would be able to let go of the guilt she felt and actually talk to Hayate herself.

The girl was full of life and energy, so much so that Harry sometimes felt tired just watching her. When she smiled though, it lit up a room, and other people around her seemed to be just that little bit more cheerful as well. One thing about Hayate that Harry tried to avoid was her love of cosplay, and how touchy-feely the girl was.

The girl loved physical contact, and often initiated hugs and so on with her friends. Harry could tell that her somewhat perverted comments about 'skinship' were just part of a cover. Hayate was a truly loveable girl, and Harry found himself laughing at and with her rather often.

Fate was the one that he connected best with though. She was quieter and more reserved than Nanoha and Hayate. She was also rather studious as well and almost scarily intelligent. It didn't hurt matters, Isis said one time, that there were a few similarities between Harry and Fate.

Fate was a clone, and Harry was possibly a golem or something else, and both had had abusive relatives. For Fate, that had been her mother, for Harry it had been the Dursleys. Of course, none but Zafira, Signum and Shamal knew all of the facts, and those three were keeping quiet for now.

They had talked about possibly contacting the TSAB and informing them about the magical communities on Earth, and that was a bit up in the air at present. Considering how xenophobic wizards tended to be, Harry was a little worried how they would react to so many literal aliens.

There was also the issues of the differences in magic between them. Shamal, Signum and Zafira had all tried some basic spells with Harry's wand, which they had a minor to moderate compatibility with, and achieved success with 'Lumos', 'Wingardium Leviosa', 'Reparo', and several others, but the amount of mana they had to put into the spell was far larger than what a wizard would require, only their larger mana reserves meant they would tire at about the same rate as wizards.

During the time he was in Japan, Zafira did spar with both Loki and Isis, helping the two of them improve their fighting skills. Isis did complain that she was one big bruise at the end of those sessions, but she still went back for more every time. Loki merely said that any practise at all was good practise, and receiving even a little instruction from as strong a person as Zafira was never a bad thing.

xxxxx

"Hello there, Harry." Harry blinked and turned around, coming face to face with Lindy Harlaown. He began to back away slowly from the one he'd personally dubbed the 'Scariest Woman Ever'. Now, there was nothing really wrong with Lindy, she was a very nice person, but when she found out about Harry's history with the Dursleys, she had become, well, rather 'motherly', at least Harry thought that was the best equivalent he could come up with.

She asked him if he was eating properly, whether he was taking care of himself, all sorts of things like that. Harry didn't like fussy, not at all, but he just couldn't say no to the blasted woman. Fate had given him a sympathetic look a few times, knowing why Lindy was doing what she was. She just didn't think that Harry particularly wanted to be her brother.

"Hello, Mrs. Harlaown." Harry replied carefully, still backing away from the woman. He felt himself bump into something behind himself, and turned his head slightly to see what it was. It turned out he'd backed into a wall, leaving him no more room to back up. He turned around to say something, but it was already too late.

xxxxx

"A picnic! A bloody picnic!" Harry groused to himself. Lindy had kidnapped him and ended up taking him to this out of the way park where the others were already waiting for him. Heck, even Rein, Isis and Loki were waiting for him, a large grin on their faces when they caught sight of Harry's expression.

"Well of course a picnic, you said that you would be leaving tomorrow, so we've got to say goodbye to our newest friend, don't we?" Hayate asked him with a grin on her face. Harry eyed her carefully, making sure she didn't have another costume hidden behind her back that she was about to try and convince him to wear.

"I suppose." Harry said half-heartedly, much to everyone else's amusement.

"Yep, and I needed revenge for that last prank. I don't know how you managed to get those kittens to act that way, but I will find out!" The girl declared.

Harry gave her his best innocent look. "Why do you think that was me?" He asked her. Over her shoulder, her made eye contact with Signum, who began to shake slightly with silent laughter. That did not go unnoticed though, at least by Fate, whose eyes went wide at that as she began to laugh, drawing everyone's attention to her.

"What is it, Fate?" Nanoha asked, confused at what her friend was laughing at.

"I think that Harry might have had a partner in crime for those pranks." She said with a pointed look at Signum.

At her look, everyone else looked at the silently shaking with laughter Signum, put two and two together and came out with four, for a change. "Signum!"

"You mean to tell me that the General of Raging Flame has been playing prankster with our newest friend?" Lindy asked with a raised eyebrow. "My, my, I never expected that of you, Signum." She shook her head sadly.

"Hey!" Harry called. "You still haven't explained why you think I'm the one playing tricks on all of you."

Nanoha rolled her eyes. "Really? We did kind of notice that the tricks only started when we met you, and that most of them have been aimed at Hayate and Lindy."

Lindy pouted and took a drink from her green tea with sugar. "Why me though?" She asked. "What did I do?"

Harry and Fate made eye contact, an understanding passing between them. "You can be a little... scary at times, Mom." Fate said. "A little overzealous as well... Why don't we drop this subject now?" She asked, after trying to tell her mother to calm down on the abused orphan front.

"I'm still hung up on Signum being a prankster." Vita said, eyeing her fellow knight suspiciously.

"Situational awareness is never a bad thing. Maybe on a battlefield it wouldn't be a harmless trick but an actual trap." Signum replied, her expression stoic and flat. Well, it remained that way until Shamal started muttering.

"That's just your excuse, we all know the truth." The healer stated under her breath. At that, a sparkle appeared in Signum's eye, even as she maintained her calm expression and demeanour.

"So where are you going next?" Lindy was the one to ask. "And is there anyway we could keep in contact?"

Harry gave them a phone number to connect to. He'd bought a mobile phone while on Cryas, and he'd gotten it modified so it would accept an Earth sim card as well. The sim card was to fool them into thinking he was just another ordinary Earth person.

If Reinforce did gather up the courage to talk to Hayate, which looked like an uphill battle, then he would tell them a few more things about himself, but he would wait for her to do that before anything else. Being around these people had been good for Reinforce, and Harry planned to return here for other holidays as well. With Loki looking around twenty-four or twenty-five, it wasn't too difficult to get booked into a hotel, so they had somewhere to stay.

The picnic turned out to be not too bad, it was rather good actually, and Harry managed to get his revenge on Lindy for dragging him to it. Zafira was the only one that didn't laugh when Lindy got chased around the place while being chased by a horde of small, bright pink bunny rabbits. One look at Harry, and he knew exactly where those rabbits had come from.

xxxxx

"Hey, Harry, look at this." Isis said, waving some sort of flyer in his face.

"Let me have a look then." Harry shook his head and took the flyer from Isis' hand. They were now on a commercial flight to Mid-Childa, and Isis had grabbed all kinds of brochures and things from Cryas before they'd left. It seemed that one in particular had caught her attention and she wanted to share it for some reason.

"Hmm? Aspiring members of the TSAB. Combat classes of all sorts, both individually and as a team. Now this looks interesting. Three evenings a week for two hours apiece. Must attend a minimum of one session a week, but can go to all if you wish." Harry read through the thing several times, then looked up at Isis' grinning face and then across towards Loki who appeared interested as well.

"It's a monthly membership thing, do you want me to sign us up when we get back? It's a personal teleport away from Earth, so we could get there quite easily. It also just so happens that the day and night hours match up with Britain, so that shouldn't cause an issue." Harry asked.

Loki considered it for a moment, before nodding his head. "Yes, it would probably be a good idea to sign us all up. If that prophecy the Sorting Hat mentioned is anything to go off, you are going to have to fight this Voldemort person sooner or later. Being a more capable fighter can only help, and we are not going to let you do it alone, so that means we should learn to fight as well."

Isis nodded her head emphatically. "Yep, you're not leaving us out of this. Who could I torment if you just up and died on me?" She asked, looking at Harry with wide eyes. Loki snorted.

"You forget, if Harry dies then so do we, a familiar will not live past their master's demise." The raven familiar shook his head at the unicorn girl.

"Aw, poopy." She said, before she grabbed Harry into a tight hug. "Comfort me, Harry, I don't think I can pull through this alone!"

"I'll give you a hug on the condition that your hands don't end up anywhere inappropriate and you keep your lewd comments to yourself." Harry replied deadpan.

"You're no fun." Isis huffed, but agreed anyway, and just kept cuddled up to Harry while the three of them talked about this fighting club thing and how their team dynamics would work. Harry would most definitely be an up front attacker, aside from not being well suited to that role, he was the most desirable target in a fight, the one an enemy would seek to take out first.

The thing is, neither Loki or Isis were particularly up front fighters either. Isis' specialisation in barriers and healing meant that she was also a desirable target for an enemy to take out. Given that she used a variation of the most basic shooting spell in the Mid-Childa magic system, she could also be quite a predictable fighter.

Loki was their wild card. His stealth specialisation meant that he could remain undetected and be a ghost on the battlefield remaining unseen and unknown until he took an opponent out from behind. His secondary specialisation, manoeuvrability, was more useful in close quarters than anything the other two had, but that was all he had.

Harry's specialisation in summoning and binding meant that he would be their 'commander' as it were. He would create the waves of critters with which to attack and overwhelm enemies, while Loki would use them as a distraction with which to disappear.

Isis was stuck in the same boat as Harry, not being suited for combat, but they might be able to improvise. Harry was considering the Chain Bind spell and how it might be modified to cause damage to those that get caught in it, while Isis was thinking about using her powerful magic shields to protect herself while she got up close and personal with an enemy, using the shield as a sort of battering ram or something.

They'd also discussed Devices, and what form they might want them to take. Loki had already decided that he would probably fare best with a short blade of some sort, maybe one that could split into two. A two sword style might allow him to make use of his manoeuvrability to weave a web of attacks around an enemy, making sure that at least a few of them hit the mark.

Isis seemed to favour pole-arms, keeping an enemy at a distance if she really needed to get in on an attack. Maybe a caduceus would be most appropriate for her, the symbolism in regards to healing was a rather nice touch, even if the caduceus was Greek and she was named after an Egyptian goddess.

Harry was the odd one though, the weapon he tended to favour was the English longbow. Harry found most swords to be awkward, and while he could use them, pole-arms weren't for him either. A dagger or long knife felt alright in his hands, and he had used Bloody Daggers as such before, but he was a seeming natural with a bow.

It didn't really matter, he'd get what he could and that would be that. He'd get Armed Devices for Isis and Loki, but a Storage Device would be fine for him, or maybe a Boost Device with the way that he seemed to favour summoning.

They'd seen Devices for sale on Cryas, but since Mid-Childa was Administrated World 1, where the TSAB was based from and essentially the metaphysical centre of the universe, there would probably be higher quality and variety Devices than in an out of the way place like Cryas was.

xxxxx

"I really hate crowds." Harry muttered under his breath, only for Loki to chuckle at him and for Isis to pat him on the head.

"This _is_ Mid-Childa, you know." Loki told him. "What did you expect?"

"Now, what are we going to do first?" Isis asked, looking around at everything with wonder in her eyes.

"Devices, I believe." Harry said. "As soon as we can get them purchased and calibrated, we can look around all you want. Heck, I'll even come shopping with you if you want." Harry began to regret saying that almost the instant that the words left his mouth, the glint in Isis' eyes was frightening.

"Okay, let's get that done first then." Reinforce interjected, before Isis could start on her perversion again.

"We'll need to head north then." Loki said, looking in that direction. "The church is the largest group that makes use of Belkan Devices, i.e. Armed Devices, and that's probably the best area to purchase a high quality Device. I'm not sure where we'd look for a Device for Harry, but he tends more towards a Mid-Childan one than a Belkan one.

"North it is then, and back on the infernal public transport." Harry glared at a train that decided to take that moment to speed on by them. They headed into the station and got on a train heading North, it was apparently often used by those that went to the Saint Hilde Academy of Magic, and that gave Harry a bit of an idea.

"Hey, if things don't work out at Hogwarts, do you think I could transfer to this Saint Hilde place?" He asked, looking at his familiars and Reinforce. The three of them blinked as one, then looked at each other for a moment. It was Reinforce who answered him though.

"It's a possibility." She said. "They would be able to teach you most, if not all, of the styles of magic in the known universe. They would not, however, be able to teach you anything about Terran magic, only somewhere on Earth would be able to teach you that. You could always ask if they have summer classes though, and maybe attend a few of them."

Harry bowed his head. "It's still a possibility though, but just that, a possibility."

xxxxx

Purchasing a Device each for Loki and Isis was fairly easy. Loki's took on a form similar to that of a Roman gladius that could split along its length, giving him two blades, just like he'd wanted. Isis did get a staff, but instead of a caduceus for a head, it had a large ruby-like gem in its place.

After that, they headed off to other Device shops, looking for something that would suit Harry. The boy in question joked that he was simply too picky and should just shut up and pick something, but he didn't, and he kept looking for something that might appeal to him.

They ended up in a rather odd shop that had some strange Devices available. Now, there had occasionally been a shop which had an Intelligent Device with a Cartridge System installed into it, or something like that, because apparently that thing was gaining in popularity for about a year now.

This shop, on the other hand, had some of the most bizarre creations that any of them had ever seen. There was this one device that had the hilt of a sword, but not the blade. Instead, it had hundreds of incredibly thin, but strong, wires coming out of it. Something like that, apparently, required a very skilled user.

"Well, what are ya looking for?" The guy behind the counter asked.

Harry shrugged his shoulders and explained the sort of thing he had in mind. For some reason, the shopkeeper's maniacal grin didn't make Harry feel very comfortable, and he had the slightest feeling of foreboding as well. After he'd finished explaining what he'd like his device to be like, the shopkeeper's grin grew even wider.

"I think I know what I could do for ya! Now, this would be expensive, but I'm thinking I could make you a device from scratch that fits your needs. What do you say? Do you want to give it a shot?" Harry thought about it for a moment. Price wasn't really all that important, a Device was certainly something you'd want to have the best of rather than the cheapest, but did he trust this somewhat eccentric shopkeeper?

"Very well, I'll give you a chance." Harry said after a little while of hesitating.

"Excellent!" The shopkeeper cried. He then stood up, wandered over to his shop door, and activated some sort of alarm that would let him know when someone came in the door. After that, he headed into a back room which was full of all sorts of partially completed devices, parts and schematics.

"Right, the way I see it, you need your device to specialise in two separate areas." The shopkeeper said. "From what you've told me, you need the processing power and simplicity of an ordinary Storage Device, but some of the traits of a Boost Device would be great as well, perfect in fact."

The guy then began to rummage around amongst all of the parts, before drawing out a blank schematic, and then taking down notes on it. "Now, even though that the Cartridge System was successfully implemented in Intelligent Devices, that doesn't mean that we can just slam two Devices together and make them work. There are so many issues preventing that from happening that it isn't even funny."

He turned to them again, his crazy grin on his face once more. "That doesn't mean they can't work in tandem however, just that even going that far is pushing it." Harry tried to make sense of the scribble on the schematic, but it was utterly incomprehensible to him.

The shopkeeper went on like that for a while, seemingly randomly pulling out various parts and making notes on the paper, discarding some parts every now and then, before turning around and 'explaining' his thought processes to Harry, Reinforce, Isis and Loki.

Harry was glad to pay a down payment and get out of there.

xxxxx

After they'd left that shop, and they would be back in a week to see what had been made for Harry, Isis decided to make good on Harry's promise to go shopping. Making sure not to suffer alone, Harry dragged both Loki and Reinforce with him as well.

It turned out to not be as bad as Harry thought it was going to be. Yes, he'd had to dodge several lingerie shops before Isis could drag him in there, but she didn't go too far when modelling her clothing choices. She did get some clothes that covered more than simply what was necessary to remain descent, but the majority of her clothes did follow her more regular clothing standards.

Loki, Reinforce and Harry all got some new clothes as well. Loki looked rather smart in a suit, and rather ridiculous in sunglasses it must be said. Reinforce, even if she was keeping the illusion bracelet on that changed her hair and eye colour, looked absolutely magnificent in a summer dress that she picked out along with a straw hat.

Harry stuck with boots, pants and t-shirts. He did get a silver pendant in the form of a dragon that he liked, but he didn't find many things he really wanted to purchase in any of the shops. Thankfully, now that he was no longer on Earth, he could fully use his Terran magic to make things easier, shrinking charms made carrying shopping bags so much easier.

Of course, once they'd been clothes shopping, Isis decided that it would be a great idea to go to an amusement park. Looking for an amusement park did take them a while, and when they did find one, well, it was a big one. Harry looked at one of the rides and gave a whistle of appreciation. If he thought roller-coasters on Earth looked fairly cool, this was out of this world!

Harry was briefly hit with a fit of the giggles at that thought. 'Out of this world' from the perspective of an Earth person, was a rather accurate and true way of thinking about everything since he'd left Cryas. Once he'd gotten over his little laughing fit, he and the others entered the park and proceeded to have a fun day.

xxxxx

"What are we going to do now, Harry?" Isis asked.

Harry just gave the unicorn familiar a look. He didn't think calling it a day would be a good idea, not with the amount of sugar that Isis had consumed. The problem was, he didn't know what there was to do on Mid-Childa, being from an unadministrated and all.

Deciding to just see the sights and wander around for now, Harry suggested just that. They saw a number of things, from the TSAB headquarters, to the Saint Church, a number of parks, and many other places along the way. It was as the first signs of evening were starting to appear, that they ended up outside another building.

"The Infinite Library." Harry said with a small amount of wonder in his voice. He was a Ravenclaw, he loved books, he can be forgiven for being in awe of the largest repository of knowledge in the known universe. Oh, what would some people from back on Earth give to visit here even once?

Harry's mind briefly drifted to Hermione, shuddered at what she might contemplate doing for access to this place, tried to erase those memories, failed, promised itself to never speak of this again, and then drifted away from that thought, leaving it isolated and sealed away for all eternity.

"Hello there." A friendly voice said, making Harry blink and look at who was talking to him. "I'm Yuno Scrya. I just noticed you looking rather out of it there, and wondered if there's anything I can do to help."

"Hello there, I am Harry Potter, it is a pleasure to meet you." Harry said to the blonde boy. "Sorry about spacing out like that, but I absolutely love to learn and this place just kind of pressed all of my buttons at once."

Yuno chuckled. "I saw that just now. I work here, so I certainly know what it's like, you're not the first to act like that, and I'm sure you will not be the last."

Harry blinked, looked at the boy who was the same age as himself and asked. "You work here?"

A large, slightly maniacal smile began to appear on Harry's face as a certain idea made itself known, planted itself in his mind and grew.


	3. Diagon Alley

AN: Chapter three here, and I don't have much to say. Oh, I might have a few things actually. If anyone has any idea for names for Loki's and Isis' Devices, they would be appreciated. Also, I've been told that I seem to be slipping towards Potter bashing, so I'll put this here: The Potters aren't evil. Yes, they made mistakes, but they also have redeeming qualities. Come on, a rich kid with an invisibilty cloak? Do you _really_ think a hormonal wizard isn't going to perv on girls? The HP books kind of portray James and Lily as fairly perfect, but they are human. When everything comes out into the open, the Potters are not going to be forked tail and pointy stick devils, nor are they going to be brilliantly white winged angels. There will be good and bad involved with them. Harry has so far had a very bad view of them, and though he will come to acknowledge some of their good points, he isn't going to forgive them and make happy family either. I'll just leave this here for you all.

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 3 – Diagon Alley

Vita answered a knock at the door of the Yagami household. It turned out to be the postman that had a large package with him, one too large to fit through the letterbox. She signed for it, before taking a look to see who it was for. The box wasn't very large, only about the size of a child's shoe box, but it was rather heavy. Zafira's name was on the outside of the box as well, which Vita thought was odd, who would send the wolf something?

"Hey, Zafira, there's a package here for you." Vita shouted through the house as she wandered into the front room.

Zafira was laid out in wolf form on the floor, but he switched back to his more human form and took on a confused look. Hayate, attracted by Vita's shout, also wandered into the room, also looking curious as to what Zafira was being sent. Shamal and Signum also entered the room, the latter had a strange glint in her eyes and a camera in her hands.

Zafira placed the package in front of him and tore the paper off it. Inside was an ordinary cardboard box. He lifted the lid and flipped it off, wondering what was inside. It turned out to be full of pebbles for some reason, and Hayate huffed in disappointment, having obviously expected something better than that.

Only Shamal really took note of the camera in Signum's hands and guessed at what might be going on. A yell from Zafira had her turning back to him and she couldn't help but let out a startled laugh at the sight. Hayate spun around to see what Shamal was laughing at, and what Signum was taking pictures of as well of course.

The pebbles, it turned out, didn't seem to want to remain as pebbles. As everyone watched, more and more pebbles flew out of the box, turned into various coloured rabbits, and piled onto Zafira. After about a minute, they stopped coming out of the box, but Zafira was now drowning in a sea of multi-coloured fur from more than three hundred rabbits.

Vita, a black rabbit clutched tightly in her arms, looked into the box to see if anything else was in there. She pulled out a note, read it, laughed, looked at Zafira, laughed again, and handed the note to Shamal, who read it, rolled her eyes, and handed the note to Signum.

_Please enjoy my gift, dear wolf_

_I noticed you always had your eyes on rabbits when I visited._

_I thought you might want one of your own, so here they are._

_Don't worry if there are too many, most of them will disappear in a day or two._

_I'm not sure how long the rest will last, a few years maybe?_

_Anyway, have fun with them._

_HP_

Shamal looked at Signum. "He asked you to take photos, didn't he?" She asked.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Signum replied, as she burnt the note up in her hand with a small blast of fire. She then transferred the pictures she'd taken to her Device, Laevatein, and send them to the contact address Harry had left behind.

xxxxx

In the Infinite Library, a great distance away from Earth, Harry felt something vibrate in his pocket. He pulled out the mobile phone he'd purchased back on Cryas and opened the message. A holographic screen appeared above the phone and Harry began to look through the photos and attached message.

"Hey, what's that?" Isis asked, looking over his shoulder at the photos.

"Oh, just an experiment of mine." Harry replied casually. "I etched a Nauthiz rune into a bunch of pebbles and then cast 'Lapifors' on them and a compulsion charm. The idea is that the Nauthiz rune acts as a delay which is triggered when a condition is met. I decided to test it out and set the condition to one of them being touched by Zafira."

"So what happened?" Loki asked, coming around a bookshelf towards them.

"It worked, as soon as Zafira touched one of them, there was a five second delay before they turned into rabbits and swarmed him." Harry grinned. "As for what I plan to do with it, well, take a look." Harry reached into a pouch tied at his waist and pulled out a pebble with a Nauthiz rune etched onto it. He threw the pebble on the floor in front of him.

Loki and Isis watched on curiously as, after a short delay, the pebble turned into a dragon about the size of a pony. Their eyes widened as they realised that Harry had not used up a drop of mana to achieve this, as the pebble had been pre-prepared.

"There's two compulsion charms on it. One of them is to obey me, the other is to defend me and those I designate as allies from threats." Harry told them, before reversing the transfiguration and putting the pebble back into the pouch at his waist.

"How many did you make?" Isis asked, looking at the rather small pouch at Harry's waist. Harry's answering grin was rather scary, as he started to chuckle.

"I've only made, oh, about eighty of them so far. I was waiting to see if they worked before I made any more." Seeing Loki's raised eyebrow at the small bag on Harry's waist, the boy waved him off. "The bag has a basic expansion charm on it and a feather light charm as well." He explained.

"Interesting, but I think we should be getting back to work." Loki said.

Harry rolled his eyes. "You know that when I asked Yuno if it was possible to get a summer job here, I meant just me, don't you?" He asked.

Loki chuckled lightly and smiled at Harry. "Yes, we do, but you're forgetting a few things. One, Reinforce is just as much, if not more, of a bibliophile as you are, so she was not likely to pass up such an opportunity. I, like you, am also using my access to the library to search out more esoteric spells to add to my repertoire. As for Isis, I think she just didn't want to be left out."

Isis stuck her tongue out at Loki. "Nah, I've actually been reading up on magical creatures throughout known space. It's funny, but the TSAB thinks that unicorns and phoenixes are myths. Weirdly enough, dragons are rather common and there are whole planets for them."

"Okay, okay." Harry said, cutting her off before she could really get going. Surprisingly, for all of her perversity, Isis seemed to like reading up on magical creatures, and she could talk for hours about them. Harry well remembered the time she'd spent two and a half hours explaining the number of things one book had gotten wrong about thestrals. "Let's all get back to work now, shall we?"

Isis huffed and folded her arms, well aware that Harry had just cut her off and why, but she went back to what she was doing. Loki took a stack of books and headed in another direction, while Harry remained where he was and continued on with organising and checking the books in front of him.

xxxxx

"Here you go, one custom-crafted Device." The shopkeeper said, handing his creation over. "Well, more like two Devices that act together as one, but you get the picture." Harry idly nodded his head as he examined what was now his Device.

They took the form of a pair of fingerless gloves. They were black in colour and they each had a gem embedded on the back of the hand. The left one was red in colour, while the right one was green, just like his eyes were two separate colours. The two gems seemed to shine with an inner light, and Harry, having been curious about how magic and technology worked side by side, knew why they were like that from something he'd read in the Infinite Library.

It turned out that Mid-Childa and other words didn't use conductive metals for their technology, but crystals. On Earth, they were just beginning to consider the possibility of using artificially created crystals for circuitry, but on administrated worlds it was a standard. Because crystals conducted magic differently to metal, magic could work alongside and with technology made that way.

"Now, the active form of your Device, that's something that I had a lot of fun with." The shopkeeper said, rubbing his hands together and grinning widely. "Because there are two Device cores that make up the heart of your Device, it has absolutely insane processing power and speed. Imagine a form for your Device to take and activate it, go on, give it a try."

Harry shrugged, looked at the gloves, and focused on an image in his mind. "Set up, Aionia Mnimi." The name he'd chose was Greek for 'Eternal Memory', and it had been inspired by Reinforce. The original nature of her tome had been forgotten when she'd been corrupted, and it was that loss of memory that Harry thought the worst part of it all. He never wanted to forget anyone, anything, that ever happened to him or to the people he knew.

There was a flash of light, and in Harry's hand there appeared a staff. It was a duplicate of the one Reinforce had once held when the corrupted Book of Darkness had taken control during the fight over Uminari City. Harry blinked in surprise, not having expected that to have happened.

"Now, try imagining it in a different form." The shopkeeper said, and Harry did just that. He imagined his Device taking on the form of Raising Heart. To his surprise, the Device seemed to flow like a liquid until it had taken on the form that Harry had imagined, making him almost drop it in shock.

The shopkeeper laughed heartily. "Ah, I had a lot of fun making that. I call it 'Liquid Metal Alchemy'. You see, instead of making the device in a single form, they are suspended in a non-conductive semi-liquid metal. Alchemical spells already exist for altering the form of something, so I added that concept to the staff. Of course, there are limits, but this should be rather useful to you, no?"

Harry imagined his Device taking on the form of an English Longbow, and it did. The bow itself was a matte black colour, and the two gems that were the cores of the device were at the ends of the bow, right where the string would be attached. The colour and the two gems had remained the same, no matter what form the Device took, but Harry liked it.

"Thanks, I love it." Harry said, honestly appreciating the Device that had been created for him.

Once Harry left the shop, he looked down at the fingerless gloves he now wore on his hands, or more specifically the gems on the back of them. Loki looked at them with interest as well, but he was thinking about something else, and he spoke up about it.

"Hey, master, can you link that up with your Tome of Shadows?" He asked.

Harry grinned at him, and pulled several clear crystals out of his back. "I'm going to be doing some experimentation. Theoretically, it should be possible, but the _how_ of it is something else. A memory that's been added to the Tome should be able to be held by a crystal, and since a crystal can be used in circuitry, it follows that a memory can be converted into data that the device can understand. Unfortunately, there's no currently available way to make this happen, so like I said, I need to experiment."

Loki shrugged his shoulders. "If you say so." He said.

Isis poked Loki in the shoulder before latching onto Harry. "Well I have faith in master, even if you don't." She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Hey!" Loki protested. "I didn't say he couldn't do it, just that I didn't really follow what he was saying."

Reinforce began laughing gently as the raven familiar and the unicorn familiar get into a friendly little argument, neither of them putting much heat into their argument, keeping it light jabs at one another. She shared a smile with Harry at the sight, and the two of them rolled their eyes as one.

"Come on, you two." Harry eventually broke the argument up. "It's time we were heading off to the Infinite Library now." He said, leading the way through the streets they were becoming to get familiar with. Loki and Isis fell into step with each other behind Harry and Reinforce as they headed off to the library again.

xxxxx

A flash of fire preceded Harry and his familiars' appearance in an alleyway near to the Leaky Cauldron on Charing Cross road. "Thanks, Fawkes." Harry said to the fiery bird that had just literally brought them across galaxies. Fawkes chirped a farewell before disappearing in another flash of fire, probably off to wherever he went for the summer break.

Harry had been surprised that the phoenix had actually transported them like he had. He'd remembered last year, when Fawkes had given him permission to summon him, and he'd given it a go out of curiosity. The fact that Fawkes had easily crossed the distance between Earth and Mid-Childa, without negative effect, had astounded Harry, and he'd asked if Fawkes wouldn't mind taking them back home. The phoenix, surprisingly, had agreed. Harry made a mental note to get a treat for Fawkes in thanks.

"Wednesday the twenty-sixth of August, a week before September first. Well, six days actually, seeing as September first is a Tuesday, but at least I kept fairly good track of the date." Harry said, looking at a newspaper that had been left on the table of a café once he had stepped out of the alley.

He looked back over his shoulder at Loki and Isis. Loki was wearing a trench coat, but rather than having slits to feed his wings through, he had simply put the coat over the top of them and kept them flat against his back. Isis was also wearing a trench coat, hers was white unlike Loki's black one, that covered her equine tail. On her head, she wore a wide brimmed hat that she didn't seem to like, Harry knew that was because her ears were being squashed underneath it.

Harry chuckled at her annoyed expression, which switched to a pout at his laughter. "I told you to practise some shape-shifting, it's not my fault you didn't. I quite like my adult form, thank you very much."

Loki rolled his eyes at Harry. "We were practising other things instead. I'm sure with all of the notes you took, and everything you copied into your Tome, we shouldn't have too much difficulty with it. After all, we can already shift between animal and hybrid forms, that will likely help us and make it easier."

Harry shook his head, a smile on his face, as he stepped into the Leaky Cauldron. First thing's first, he headed up to the bar to ask Tom about getting a room for a week. There was no issue with that, and Harry decided to get something to eat. He ordered three breakfasts for himself, Isis and Loki.

Taking a seat, Harry waited with Isis and Loki for the breakfasts to be cooked. While he was waiting, he flicked through his Tome of Shadows. Now that he'd added so much more to it, from all he'd read while working in the Infinite Library, there were some things that he wanted to take a closer look at.

One thing he was currently looking at was the differences between Mid-Childan shape-shifting into animal forms with Wizarding Animagus transformations. One major difference was how the two separate transformations were accomplished. An Animagus allowed their magic to flow into a form that was 'natural' to them, meaning they only ever had one possible alternate form.

The Mid-Childan transformation required an incredibly detailed knowledge about the biology of whatever it was you wanted to turn into. You needed to know about every bone in their body, every muscle they possessed, everything. The fact that Yuno Scrya had managed such a transformation by the age of nine was frankly scary to Harry.

Deciding that trying to learn both transformations simultaneously might highlight even more differences between them, Harry had focused on the first steps of both. Vast amounts of meditation was required for the Animagus transformation, and now Harry spent up to an hour and a half every night before bed, just meditating, thinking of nothing at all.

For the shape-shifting, Harry had decided that an ordinary animal was perhaps the best idea to practise with, and he was now reading vast amounts of information about guinea pigs. He had bought more than a dozen books detailing their skeletal, musculature, circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems. The amount of information there was to sort through was, Harry thought, surprisingly massive.

Harry had just finished his breakfast and was leafing through some of his books, noting a few things down here and there, when the door to the muggle side of London opened. Now, this happened fairly regularly, so it wasn't something to really focus on. The difference this time, was that the one who came was someone familiar with him, and not just another random person.

"Harry!" A female voice called out, making said boy look up to see who had seen him. He was almost knocked off his chair as a bushy-haired missile made contact with him at speed. Taking another look, Harry was able to replace 'Bushy-haired missile' with 'Hermione'.

"If you _really_ want to straddle him, we do have a room upstairs." Isis said with a faux innocent voice, seeing how Hermione had nearly ended up in Harry's lap.

"Loki, hit her." Harry's muffled voice came from amongst Hermione's mane of frizzy hair.

There was the sound of an impact and an indignant "Hey!" from the two familiars, and Harry knew that Loki had done as he asked. Chuckling slightly, Harry managed to get Hermione's surprisingly strong grip off his neck and have her stand back a bit so he could see her properly.

Looking over her shoulder, Harry said. "Hello there. I presume that you are Mr. and Mrs. Granger, the resemblance is certainly there." Hermione's cheeks burned as she turned around jerkily to see her mother's smirking face and her father's raised eyebrow.

"Yes, we would be." Hermione's mother said. "I'm Emma, and this is my husband, Dan." She looked at Harry again. "And judging by my daughter's exclamation, you would be Harry Potter. We expected to see you on platform nine and three-quarters at the end of last year, but Hermione didn't seem to be able to find you."

Harry just smiled innocently back at her, but Hermione's father, Dan, coughed to get their attention. "Can I ask what the lady sat next to you meant by what she said to Hermione? Something about a room upstairs, wasn't it?" There was a veiled threat in there, that of a protective father.

Harry just rolled his eyes. "Ignore what this perverted unicorn says, she insinuates things she shouldn't, and that comment was her being subtle, she can be far worse, believe me." Harry told him. "Oh, yeah, introductions. This is Isis, she's a unicorn, and this is Loki, he's a raven."

"They don't look like animals." Emma said sceptically.

Instead of giving an explanation, Loki simply shifted into his raven form, and landed on Emma's shoulder. Said woman blinked, before reaching up to touch the bird, stroked him a little, then just shook her head. Loki returned to his place at the table and turned back into his hybrid form.

"They were animals, they're now my familiars of a sort. I don't think that indoors, especially not in a pub, is the best place for Isis to transform, but we could do that later if you really want to see it." Harry replied to Emma. "You here to get your books and things for school?" Harry asked.

"Yes, we are." Emma told Harry.

"Well, I need to get my things as well. Would you mind if we accompanied you?" Harry asked.

"Not at all." Emma said. "I hope you don't mind if we ask a few questions though, there seems to be so much we don't know, and Hermione can only tell us so much herself." There seemed to be something more to that, and the flicker of apprehension on Hermione's face only confirmed that thought for Harry.

He shrugged his shoulders though, and agreed to answer their questions to the best of his ability. He stacked up the three plates from breakfast, put them on the bar, and headed out the back with the Grangers, heading out into Diagon Alley.

"Excuse me, but I need to go to the Owl Office first. I've been away for a while now, and I'll need to retrieve any mail I might have received." Harry told them, and they all headed off to get Harry's post from his drop box and end the rental on it.

"So where have you been if you've been out of contact?" Emma asked.

"I spent a bit of time in Japan." Harry replied. "I also went to a few other magical communities, and bought a few souvenirs and things while I was there." Like a hover-board, Harry thought to himself. Brooms were one thing, Harry thought they were alright but he wasn't overly fond of them, but a hover-board was really amazing.

They walked into the Owl Office and up to the desk. Harry had somehow managed to get the same attendant he had the last time he was in there, and things were processed rather quickly. Harry removed a large stack of post and a few packages from his drop box, removed his magical signature from it, signed a few things, and left.

Isis and Loki helped Harry sort through all of his things, putting the packages away in his bottomless bag, sorting the letters out by who had sent them and so on. It was only when he opened one to find a birthday card inside that he remembered that he had turned twelve a month ago.

"Oh yeah, I'm twelve now, aren't I?" Harry shook his head with bemusement, not noticing the look that Emma and Dan shared.

"How can you not know when you pass your birthday?" Dan asked. "Don't all kids look forward to presents and everything?"

Harry gained a bitter smile. "The Dursleys weren't the... ideal family, so it is rather easy for me to forget something like that. Meh, it doesn't really matter now, the only way I'll ever see them again is if I ever pass them in the street." He shrugged, not caring at all about those he'd lived with until he was eleven. "I'm guessing we need to go to Gringotts now?"

"Yes, we need to convert some of our money for magical currency." Emma said. "The conversion rate is about five pounds to a galleon, isn't it?"

Harry nodded. "Yeah, the straight up conversion rate at least. Inflation in the Muggle World is higher than the Wizarding World, so that's not accurate in terms of salary, but things are a lot cheaper in the Wizarding too, so it sort of balances out."

Harry walked into Gringotts with his familiars at his side and with the Grangers as well. Hermione and her family went to one teller to get their money sorted, but when Harry went to a goblin, he was directed into a meeting room where he met with Sharpclaw.

"Is something wrong?" Harry asked the goblin.

"Hmm, not really, but something did happen." Sharpclaw replied. "As you know, your vault fills up the day before your birthday every year. Also, you set it up so the contents would automatically get transferred to a separate vault under your control. Your trust vault no longer exists, it was shut down."

"The Potters noticed something was off then?" Harry asked, though he said it more like a statement than a question.

"I am guessing so. Trust funds aren't really meant to be emptied, like you did with yours. They're meant to hold a certain amount of money and then get topped up every year. Seeing as yours had to be filled up from empty, the Potters probably noticed the suddenly missing large sum of money." Sharpclaw explained.

"So what does this mean?" Harry asked.

"Your school tuition was paid off, so the contents of your vault are yours, that's it. Excepting what you've taken out, the total is twice the capacity of your trust fund, which, believe me, is a rather a lot of money. You asked me to invest your money for you, which I have done, so you are getting a profit, and increasing your funds. That, and how little you spend, mean that you are slowly making money of your own." Sharpclaw explained.

"That's good." Harry replied, before a sly smirk appeared on his face. "So, tell me, do Goblins purchase gold bars?" Harry asked. He then opened an expanded bag and started bringing out said gold bars.

It was amusing, because of how rare gold was on Earth and how plentiful silver was, gold was the more pricey metal. However, it was more common for the opposite to be true on other planets. As such, when Harry had sold off his silver bars, he had been able to purchase an equal number of gold bars for a fraction of the price. Now, here he was back on Earth, and if he sold the gold to the goblins, he would be making one hell of a profit.

xxxxx

Back out in the Alley, Harry met up with the Grangers again. It also seemed that the Weasleys had also arrived in the Alley to do their shopping for Hogwarts as well. Arthur Weasley was talking excitedly to Emma and Dan, who both looked taken aback by a man that seemed absolutely fascinated by things as simple as an electronic torch or a rubber duck.

"Harry, hey!" Three voices called out. Harry turned and saw Ron, Fred, and George Weasley.

Harry greeted them back, asking how they were, and all of the usual pleasantries that people exchange. Apparently they'd just walked into Hagrid before getting to Gringotts, and now they were about to head down to their vault before doing the school shopping.

Harry decided to wait with the Grangers while they did so, then they could do all of their shopping together. While they waited, Harry and Hermione explained why Arthur Weasley had acted as he had. What with their lack of interaction with the Muggle World, his fascination with them despite that, and how there were so many spells for everything, it made them seem a bit backwards.

"Why didn't he understand us when we said we were dentists?" Dan frowned. "Surely they have medical care, don't they?"

"They have healers." Harry replied. "Though Healers are more like Doctors than anything else. There are spells to clean your teeth, and all sorts of other things, so dentists are simply not necessary. That's not always a good thing, mind you. Because they have things like calming draughts and memory spells, they don't have psychiatrists or anything that deals with mental problems, which can cause some issues."

"Really?" Emma asked, rather curious about the Wizarding World.

Harry nodded. "It doesn't help matters that they only have one prison, and Azkaban is _not_ a pleasant place. There are essentially five punishments in the Wizarding World, as far as the law goes at least. You can receive a warning, pay a fine, have your magic bound for a period of time, have your magic bound permanently and be exiled from the Wizarding World, or you can go to Azkaban."

"Have your magic bound did you say?" Hermione asked, having not read about that.

Harry just tilted his head in acknowledgement. "That punishment is extremely rare though, I don't think it's happened since Eighteen-Ninety or thereabouts." At Hermione's look, Harry rolled his eyes. "I got bored of listening to nothing but Goblin Wars in Binns' class so I started flicking through random history books instead."

"So how bad is this Azkaban Place, and what sort of crimes warrant a stay there?" Dan asked.

"The human guard at Azkaban is cycled weekly, no auror is allowed to stay longer than that without at least a month long break from it. The non-human guards at Azkaban are the dementors. Dementors are creatures that... personify is the best word I can think of, so let's go with that. They personify despair. Just being around them will slowly drain you of all sense of happiness, they take your happy memories, feeding off them, and leaving you with nothing but your worst. They're also used for execution, using something called the dementor's kiss, which is the means by which they draw out someone's soul and eat it." Harry explained, a grim expression on his face. Dementors, in Harry's opinion, were most definitely not a pleasant sort of beings.

Thankfully, before they could delve into even more unpleasant topics, the Weasleys had returned and they headed out into the alley to purchase what they needed. Harry needed some more potions supplies, he needed extra because of what Madam Pomfrey was teaching him to brew, and Hermione needed more ink and other things, her notes being rather comprehensive.

They decided to all meet up at Flourish and Blott's for their books at half past twelve, before they separated out into smaller groups to retrieve what they wanted.

xxxxx

"I'm sure that I could get my books another day, I _am_ staying at the Cauldron for the rest of the week after all." Harry assured the others, but Molly Weasley at least wasn't having any of it.

"No, no, no. You're here now, so you can get them now. Besides, don't you want to meet the one who wrote almost the entire list?" She asked, sighing dreamily before glancing at a nearby picture, then proceeding to blush heavily.

"That's kinda the reason I _don't _want to be here right now." Harry muttered under his breath, before giving up his struggling as a lost cause and waiting for the shop doors to open.

As Harry had said on Mid-Childa, he wasn't very fond of crowds, and with this Lockhart person signing books, it was absolutely heaving. Harry also noticed that a lot of the people present were female, and also around Mrs Weasley's age as well.

No offence to Lockhart or anything, but he was definitely a pretty boy. Harry had not read a single one of his books, nor had he ever heard of Lockhart before, but he was most definitely rather pansy looking. He appeared to be the sort of man who _flounced!_

Once the doors did open, Harry was almost caught up in the rush to get in. Only with Isis' and Loki's help did he manage to get off to one side and start looking through the shelves. No books really caught his eye, and he'd already given Mrs. Weasley the money for his own books, so she could get them no problem.

"Hello, Harry Potter." A voice said behind him, making said boy spin on the spot.

He looked and saw a girl who appeared to be about his own age, though he didn't recognise her from Hogwarts so maybe she was a first year to be. She had dirty blonde hair that fell to between her shoulder blades, rather large and slightly protruding grey eyes that had a dreamy, unfocused, and far away look in them.

"Hello to you too, though I am afraid that I don't recognise you." Harry replied politely. "Are you a first year?"

The girl nodded. "I am Luna Lovegood, I'll be a first year this year." Her brow furrowed quite a bit then. "Did you know that you're possessed? She looks pretty though, beautiful silver hair and warm red eyes."

Harry was startled by that. Did this girl really know about Reinforce? Reinforce herself was bewildered about how she could have been noticed, she couldn't think of anyway that she could have been found.

"Ah, you could say that I have a beautiful guardian angel watching over me." Harry replied carefully.

Isis snickered at Harry's choice of words and Harry felt Reinforce blushing inside of him... that just sounded wrong, but I am not changing it, because it is accurate. Anyway, breaking that silly fourth wall aside (and ignoring the fact that a delightful Ravenclaw-to-be is looking right this way) let's move onto the next bit of the story.

"Harry Potter!" A voice called, and Harry turned slowly towards it. Somehow, for some silly plot-convenient reason, Gilderoy Lockhart had an unobstructed view of the Boy-Who-Lived. Being the sort of person who kept up to date with who's who, he recognised him immediately.

In a manner eerily reminiscent of Lindy's kidnapping of him for a picnic, Harry somehow ended up right next to Lockhart with one of the man's arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders. Harry was having none of this though, and Reinforce echoed the sentiment, how dare this man paw her master like that!

When the picture was developed for the Daily Prophet, there could be seen a silver-haired Harry Potter with some kind of black aura around his arm throwing Gilderoy Lockhart out of the window with enough force to break his nose on the ground outside.

Of course, after entering a unison with Reinforce, boosting himself with a Schwarze Wirkung, and throwing Lockhart out of a window, Harry ended the unison and used the confusion to slip outside. He did glance around for the girl he'd been talking to, but didn't catch sight of her.

It was a bit later, when Harry had decided to switch to his adult form and don his hooded cloak with obscuration charms on to avoid attention, that he managed to retrieve his books from Molly Weasley who had purchased them. She was in a bit of a snit about the way that Harry had treated a celebrity, but he ignored it, Fred and George thought it was pretty cool though.

Seeing that he had six days to go until September first, Harry decided that he'd visit Beth the next day to see how one of his favourite professors, even if he didn't take her class yet, was doing. If Septima was there then he'd be able to say hi to her too. That only left Poppy out of his top three faculty members at Hogwarts, but he didn't know where she might be during the summer.

He collapsed onto the bed in his room, closed his eyes, and sighed. Last year, the defence professor had tried to kill him. This year, that didn't seem to be the case, but he was now pretty sure that Lockhart would try and drag him into the picture if there were any cameras nearby. At least he had nothing else to worry about this year. A media-oriented professor he could handle, but imagine if there was a monster at school too? Yeah, like that was going to happen.


	4. Visiting Professors

AN: Okay, I'm going to put a quick AN here, because I am really tired and falling asleep, and really thinking I should stop writing fan fiction at three o'clock in the morning... well, you get the idea. Anyway, the next chapter after this should have us back at Hogwarts, or at least on the express. Dobby hasn't done anything yet for reasons that will turn up later, and all of that sort of thing. I'm wondering whether Ginny Weasley should have the diary or someone else, might make my readers guess if I randomise who has it. Also, I would like to ask whether people think that Sealing magic would work on a horcrux and, if so, how much of an effect would it have?

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 4 – Visiting Professors

"Oh, this looks interesting." Harry muttered.

The morning following the shopping trip around the Alley found Harry, Isis, Loki and Reinforce sorting through all of his mail. Some of it was rather ordinary, a few of them were of the 'reply when you get this' kind of thing, and there were even a few with tracking charms on them.

Once all of those had been sorted and shunted off to one side, there was a rather large pile of stuff that had been sent for his birthday. Most of them were just cards and the like, wishing him a happy birthday, but there were a few gifts mixed in with them all too.

It made Harry feel a little warm and fuzzy inside that he was on good terms with so many people. While he wouldn't say he was friends with everyone in his year, he was in the same year as Draco Malfoy after all, he was at least on friendly enough terms that apparently people sent him birthday cards.

Amongst the gifts, there was something each from Daphne and Blaise, as well as something from Su Li and Sally-Anne. Huh, he hadn't thought about Sally-Anne in a while. That girl had really come out of her shell and, in a few years, it was already fairly obvious who she was probably going to end up dating, especially with how much time the two spent together.

There were a few other gifts as well, from people like Hermione, Neville, and... oh? It seemed that Dumbledore had finally given him James Potter's cloak back, anonymously of course, but there was no one _but_ him who could have done it. Harry wondered what it was with Dumbledore not signing something, was it to seem mysterious or was there another purpose to it? Well, the possibility that he was simply forgetful did exist too, Harry supposed.

Anyway, the object that Harry had called interesting was, unsurprisingly, a book. He read the tag on it and blinked when he saw the name Luna Lovegood on it. Wasn't that the girl he'd met in Flourish and Blott's yesterday? Why had she sent him a birthday gift, he didn't even know the girl!

Opening the book, Harry blinked again. It wasn't written in English, nor was it in Japanese, German, French, Spanish, or any other Earth language. Reinforce, looking at the book over Harry's shoulder, recognised the text though, and she dropped what she was holding in surprise.

As Harry went flicking through it, her eyes got even wider. Each page seemed to depict a different... creature of some sort. Honestly, Harry thought that they looked like the imaginings of a young child, or possibly those of an insane asylum inmate.

A hand reaching over his shoulder distracted Harry from his browsing of the book. Noticing Reinforce's expression, he handed her the book and watched as she flicked through it, she seemed to be in something of a daze. Soon, Loki and Isis had joined Harry in observing Reinforce and the book.

"Special book, is it?" Harry asked, startling Reinforce out of whatever trance she'd been in.

"Yes." Reinforce replied hesitantly. "It's old, very old. It's a bestiary, but most of the species in here were wiped out in the Ancient Belkan wars a long time ago. It's... rather surprising to see something like this turn up again, especially here on Earth."

Harry took the book back and examined it for a moment. "Well, this one appears to be a duplicate of another book, so it's not an original. Still, I wonder why she decided to send me this, and why she decided to send me a gift at all."

"Who is it from?" Reinforce asked.

"Luna Lovegood." Harry replied. "The same girl that noticed you inside me at Flourish and Blott's."

"Blonde? Grey eyes? The one who asked whether you knew you were possessed? That one?" Reinforce asked in confusion.

"Yes, that one." Harry replied. "She said she was going to be a first year this year, so I guess that I'll get the chance to ask about it when we get to Hogwarts, or maybe even on the train if I can find her."

"Harry, you have a blank letter here." Loki spoke up, just as Reinforce had opened her mouth to say something.

Looking across, Harry saw that Loki seemed to have gotten a paper cut off of the letter in his hand. It was simple to heal it though, and he handed the blank parchment over to Harry. As soon as it was in his hand, Harry felt a small sting on his hand, and saw a few drops of blood fall onto it.

Loki looked on in surprise as words began to appear across the parchment. "Huh, there's a small spell on it so that whoever handles it will get a small cut. Most people would assume it was simply a paper cut on a sharp edge, but the parchment has been sealed so that only the desired recipient's blood will reveal what it says. I like it."

"The question is who would go to the trouble of doing so, and how they would have a sample of my blood to bind it in the first place?" Harry replied. "Blood is commonly used in wards and the like because it is simple to incorporate, and fairly difficult to break without an appropriate blood sample."

"Difficult, but not impossible." Isis added. "It is possible for someone to break through a blood-based seal without a blood sample, but the knowledge to do so is slightly uncommon. Blood's important in magic, it's why unicorn blood is so powerful."

"Shall we see who the letter is from, instead of just talking about it?" Reinforce asked.

Harry nodded, then looked at the bottom of said letter. "Oh? It seems to be from Hound, that Unspeakable from before." He quickly read through the letter, then summarised it for the others. "He's asking me to come to the Ministry at some point, because there's a prophecy orb there that he thinks I need to hear, apparently these orbs can only be removed from the shelves by the ones they are about. Also, both he and Madam Bones are looking into where the Potters might be. He says that this might take a while, because 'for every magical way there is for tracking someone, there is probably dozens of ways of hiding them'."

"From what I've heard and read, that was part of the problem in the last war against Voldemort." Loki said. "The Death Eaters would just turn up, cause some terror, kill a few people, then disappear. Because the Aurors were a reactionary force, they tended to get there too late to do anything about what had just happened."

Harry looked up in curiosity, having not read about that. Loki, with his specialisation in stealth, would probably have looked into how a small force of terrorists could elude the authorities for as long as Voldemort and his subordinates had. "Do you know why people feared speaking his name?" Harry asked. "People still flinch at the sound of it, even the kids who are too young to know about what things were like back then, they're being raised to react like that."

"Taboo." Loki replied. "It's a type of magic that can be cast over a wide area, like a country, and it acts like an alarm if a certain phrase is spoken aloud. When those who freely spoke the name Voldemort were the ones that soon ended up dead, they came up with other ways of referring to him."

They went back to searching through all of Harry's mail and presents, with Reinforce frequently looking back at that Bestiary Harry had been gifted. Harry didn't know how Luna had been able to read it, it wasn't in any language that was spoken on Earth, it didn't even resemble one of them, so how would she have known to send him it, and why would she have sent him it in the first place?

xxxxx

"Ah, finally! Come on in, you lot." Beth said, once she'd opened the front door to see Harry, Loki, Isis and Reinforce there.

She stepped back and allowed the four of them into the house. Harry had been surprised when he'd arrived at the address that Beth had given him. The house was obviously large, Harry would guess that it had around a dozen bedrooms, but it seemed really wild.

Oh, the house didn't look dilapidated or anything like that, but it was most certainly interesting to look at. The outside walls had a number of images painted on them, only a handful of which Harry could make sense of. When he got closer, he saw that each image was made up of a number of interlocking runes in various colours. The magic coming from them was also rather impressive, even more so than the wards that Harry had felt as he approached the place.

The garden was brightly coloured and incredibly disorganised, all kinds of flowers growing all over the place, and the only way he actually got to the front door was by following a twisting and winding path through all of the mess. There were fruit trees and bushes, as well as what seemed to be a small vegetable patch that was nearly overgrown with various edible plants of all kinds.

The inside was also clean, if just as miss-matched. The hallway that Beth was leading them down looked rather like what one would expect from an upper-class mansion, with oak furniture and a nice thick carpet. The rooms he glanced to on the way past, though, were rather varied. One of them was rather modern and futuristic looking, while another looked like it had been plucked out of the seventeenth century, and yet another one looked to be a workshop of some kind.

When they reached the kitchen, they found that Septima was there as well, munching on some toast with marmalade on it. She raised an eyebrow at Harry and his familiars, before her eyes zeroed on Reinforce. "Ah, is this the one who has given me so many interesting things to look at over the last year?" She asked.

"Hello, I am Reinforce. If you're asking about the magical formulae that Harry has been passing onto you, then yes, I am." Reinforce replied. She already knew Septima, Beth, and everyone else at Hogwarts, but none of them knew her, or knew she did, so she would have to be careful about what she said.

Beth sat down next to Septima as the Arithmancy professor instantly got into a discussion with Reinforce about her subject, something that Reinforce could easily contribute to. When Beth gave Septima an exasperated sigh and a smile of fond amusement, Isis gave her a questioning look.

"You know, you two seem... quite comfortable together, is there something going on between the two of you" She asked with a lecherous grin. Harry elbowed her in the gut, and rolled his eyes at the perverted unicorn.

"You're not the first to think that." Beth said, chuckling slightly. "The answer is no, me and Septima do not have a sexual or romantic interest in each other. You know that a lot of people died in the last war a decade ago, don't you? One of your classmates, Harry, Susan Bones is an orphan that lives with her aunt, several families were literally wiped out, many of them are down to having just a single heir or heiress, and so on." She frowned a little then, before she carried on.

"Both my family and Septima's were killed. We were friends in school, two oddballs. Septima was... rather obsessive about numbers, well, she still is but it has calmed down a lot as we've gotten older. I was similar, but I was always asking why, and that got on a lot of people's nerves. We were close, like sisters even, and maybe we did do a little... experimenting when we were younger, but we never really got involved with each other." Beth explained.

Loki looked curious. "The Wizarding World seems rather old-fashioned to me, would they really accept a same-sex relationship that easily?" He asked.

Beth chuckled. "It is illegal for two males to marry one another, but not two females. There is magic that can temporarily give one working genitalia for the opposite gender. With this, lesbians can get pregnant with each other, but, because it is only temporary, gays can't have children." She took one look at Isis' face, and Harry looked as well. He saw the pervert about to say something and clamped one hand over her mouth.

That didn't really deter her, and she began to lick Harry's hand. Harry shivered slightly at this, but didn't let go, preventing her from making some perverse comment or other. He felt her pout against his hand, and looked imploringly at Beth to get her to finish whatever she was saying.

She merely grinned at Harry's situation. "You know how the population in the Wizarding World is rather low? Well, there are several incentives to having multiple children, and the Weasleys and a few others do take advantage of this. Of course, some pure blood families decide to do the exact opposite, turning their noses up at those that would accept such benefits. Anyway, harems are acceptable, and sometimes even encouraged, in the wizarding world. It's also why gay couplings are illegal, but lesbian ones are acceptable, if unusual."

"Can we get off this line of conversation now?" Harry almost pleaded. "I don't know how we got onto it, and I am feeling more than a little uncomfortable right now, especially with what Isis is doing to my hand." Harry said, glancing over to the unicorn familiar who still had Harry's hand keeping her mouth shut.

"Oh, fine then." Beth said, rolling her eyes. Harry sighed in relief as he took his hand away from Isis' mouth and proceeded to wipe her saliva off of it. Isis pouted, and Loki just chuckled at her. Reinforce and Septima broke out of their conversation to see what was so funny, but didn't see anything particularly exciting, and went back to their discussion.

"So, looking forward to another wonderful year of teaching?" Harry asked.

Beth laughed. "Yes and no, I suppose. I get those in my class that really want to learn, those who chose it randomly because they didn't know what each of the electives could be used for, and those who take it because it sounds impressive. The first ones, I love to teach, but the other two are a bit of a mixed bag."

Septima heard her and gave Harry a sly look. "It's just a shame you can't choose electives until third year, I'd love having you in my class, I could pick your brain even more if that was the case."

Beth laughed again. "You wouldn't get anything done, you'd spend all of your class time grilling poor Harry about whatever new formula he'd brought with him. Either that or you'd start trying to duplicate some of them. No one else in the class would be able to keep up, and they wouldn't learn a thing."

Septima pouted and looked at Harry with wide eyes. "I wouldn't be that bad, would I?" She asked. Harry whistled and looked anywhere but at the professor. That made everyone else laugh, and Septima huffed good-naturedly.

"You have spent all of the time since we arrived grilling Reinforce about just such a thing, have you not?" Loki asked her. Septima went to reply to that, paused, realised that was _exactly_ what she had done, slumped slightly, then proceeded to give Loki an evil glare.

Harry looked at her with amusement. "Seriously, if anyone at Hogwarts saw the two of you like this, your reputations as strict professors would disappear so quickly it wouldn't be funny."

Beth grinned at him. "You'll find, that if you _do_ decide to take our electives, that we behave very differently in the classroom than we do with you. In the classroom, we are professionals, instructors, educators, and we act appropriately. When students come to visit us outside of class time, it is for help with one thing or another, so we have to be professional then as well. With you, we can let loose a bit, and show who we truly are."

"And Skeeter's rumours are just that, rumours." Septima added.

"What rumours?" Harry asked, linking in surprise.

"You don't read the Daily Prophet, do you?" Septima asked, before rolling her eyes. "It's been all over the paper that the 'Boy-Who-Lived' is being seduced by a professor at Hogwarts. I don't know where she got _that_ idea from, and no one yet knows how much you talk with the two of us, but that's the rumour. Last I heard, they 'most likely candidate' for the one seducing you was... was it Aurora or Rolanda?" She asked Beth.

"Aurora." Beth replied, before looking at Harry's twitchy-eyed expression and chuckling. "The rumours will disappear soon enough, everyone knows that Rita Skeeter is a gossip-monger. It's just that wizards and witches are so gullible that they'll believe it, even if just for a short while."

Everyone's lips quirked in amusement as Harry's face made contact with the table. His muffled voice came from where his head was, his hair falling all over the place. "Really? I. Am. Twelve. Do they really think that a twelve year old would be receptive to something like that?"

Reinforce leaned over and gave Harry a hug. "I think it's less about it actually happening, and more about juicy gossip. You _know_ what the newspapers print about celebrities in the muggle world. I guess that, as famous as you are, you should be thankful that you're not being swarmed by paparazzi."

"Now isn't this an image just worth a picture. Damn, where's a camera when you need one?" Isis muttered. Harry and Reinforce looked up to see Isis holding her hands together, her fingers moulded into the shape of a heart as she grinned at them.

Loki was also grinning at them, and both Septima and Beth were smiling at the two. "Don't you lot think I'm a little, well, old for Harry?" Reinforce asked, her cheeks tinted a little pink.

Beth snorted. "Please, it's not unusual for people to be a decade or a little more older than their partners in the wizarding world, it comes with having a longer lifespan."

"I'm a little more than a decade older than Harry." Reinforce replied.

"So am I, but that's not stopping me." Isis commented.

"You're a familiar, Isis. When Harry dies, so will you, but I will live past him, long after he is dead, for centuries, millennia or more." Reinforce snapped back. Harry hugged Reinforce closer for a moment, trying to calm her down. He really didn't know what had made Reinforce instantly angry like that, nor did he understand why he had literally felt her anger within him, as if it was his own.

"Er, excuse me, but I think we're missing a little context here." Beth spoke up, her and Septima looking a little bewildered.

Reinforce sighed. "Suffice to say, I am not as young as I look. I was also created, not born, so I am... a little different from anything you might know about."

"Has this got something to do with how the magic formulae Harry has shown us are so different to anything I can find?" Septima asked, startling the others and making them look at her. "Oh, come on! Did you seriously think I wouldn't try and research the spells that Harry has been showing me? It's like nothing I've ever seen before, like it's from a completely different culture of magic. Heck, for all I know, it could be alien magic or something."

"The magic Harry has been sharing with you is a mix of Ancient Belkan and Mid-Childan magic primarily." Reinforce replied. "Could you not spread that around? I know, like you found, it wouldn't lead anyone anywhere if they began looking into it, but people might start asking where Harry learned all of it, and that could lead to some uncomfortable questions."

"I agree." Septima nodded her head. "On the condition that you actually let me see some of this magic in action of course." She added on eagerly. Looking at the sparkle in her eyes, Harry and Reinforce slumped a bit, then accepted the condition.

"I'll agree as well." Beth said, shrugging her shoulders. "I'm not going to make things difficult for you, simply because of my own curiosity. Though, like Septima, I would like to see more of this magic in action."

"Gefängnis der Magie" Reinforce muttered, sighing under her breath.

xxxxx

Septima Vector and Bathsheda Babbling stared with opened-eyed amazement at the sight before them. Everything around them had turned a grey colour, and it was explained to them that the barrier would make sure that nothing was damaged during their fight.

It was then explained to them the difference between Knight Armour and Combat Equipment. They didn't really listen to that part though, just accepting that the clothing that Loki and Isis wore was called Knight Armour, while Harry and Reinforce had gone for Combat Equipment.

The two of them were sat on the roof of Beth's house, and waiting for the little sparring match to start. There were two teams that were going to be sparring against each other, one team being Loki and Isis, while the other was Harry and Reinforce.

Of course, they'd been told that the only one that really had any combat experience was Reinforce, and a lot of it as well, so just having her on a team kind of made it unbalanced. Still, Harry, Loki and Isis were going to show them what they were capable of as well.

Loki's Knight Armour was very similar to his regular clothing, from what Septima and Beth could see, but there were a few differences, some extra armour around the shoulders, knees, elbows, forearms and shins for example. Isis' Knight Armour seemed to be the sleeveless white trench coat that appeared when she summoned her armour, a few extra armoured segments appearing on her joints and forearms as well.

Reinforce's Combat Equipment took the form of a plain black minidress with a gold band around her waist, two crossing her chest and a red choker-like thing around her neck. She also had fingerless gloves, armoured boots and socks of two different lengths, the one on her left leg only covering her ankle while the right one went part way up her thigh. On top of that, she wore a navy-coloured jacket and duster with a gold trim to it.

Harry's barrier-type protective clothing was a little similar to Reinforce's. He wore black trousers which were tucked into black boots that seemed to be reinforced with metal bands around the edge, and a black t-shirt. His trench coat was rather fitted around his shoulders and torso, but was looser once it past his waist, allowed to billow out a little. Harry also wore fingerless gloves, but his had two jewels of some kind on the back of them, one red and one green.

Neither Harry or Reinforce held a weapon in their hands, but both Loki and Isis did. Isis held a staff of some sort that had a ruby-like jewel at the head, and Loki held a short sword in each hand. That changed after a moment, as a halberd appeared in Harry's hands.

Septima then took a look at the flight spells that each person was using. In addition to the pair of black wings Loki sported on his back, there was also a smaller set of wings on each of his ankles. Isis had white wings at her waist, knees and ankles, while Harry and Reinforce were using the same spell. The two of them each had four black wings coming from their backs.

"Well, this is certainly going to be interesting." Septima said, looking at the four people just hovering in mid-air.

"It is, it most certainly is." Beth agreed from her seat next to Septima.

A bright red flare of magic appeared right between the two groups.

Then there was an orange flare.

Then a green, and with that the spar began.

xxxxx

"Photon Lancer!" Harry called out, summoning Fate Testarossa's shooting spell into being and launching volley after volley of shots at Isis and Loki. So far, Reinforce hadn't participated in the fight, and neither Loki or Isis were particularly willing to tangle with her.

That left Harry to try and take on the two familiars by himself. Thankfully, Isis _really_ wasn't a combat specialist. Outside of her basic shooting spell and her really strong shields, she didn't really use many combat spells. Loki's stealth speciality wasn't working so well when Harry kept shooting out masses of simple shooting spells around him, not aiming for anywhere in particular.

"Panzerschild!" He cried out, summoning a spinning purplish-black triangular shield to stop Loki's Feather Shot that had been launched at him. He was forced to dodge back a moment later as Isis had tried to get a sneaky shot in at his back. He was then caught in a bind, literally, as Isis had used her Shoot Barrett as a distraction to ensnare him with a Ring Bind.

Harry just managed to use a Bind Break in time to avoid the Shoot Barretts and Feather Shots that had converged on his position. He decided to ramp things up then, and called out "Scarlet Dragon Summon!"

A large magical circle, Mid-Childan in design, appeared near Harry. From it, came a dragon that had last seen action when the Tome of the Night Sky had still been the Book of Darkness. This dragon wouldn't be taken out by small scale shooting spells like they'd been using so far, so it would make things more interesting.

Harry hadn't used any of his 'Pebble Critters' as he called them, because this spar was all about showing Septima and Beth what Belkan and Mid-Childan magic was capable of. The fact that they seemed really intrigued by basic things like Shooting, Shield, and Flight spells meant that they would certainly be surprised when they brought out the big things, such as Bombardment magic.

"Damn it, Harry!" Isis called over to him. "You damn well know that fighting isn't my speciality! What the bloody heck do you expect me to do against a dragon!"

"Be creative!" Harry yelled back at her.

Loki, it seemed, had another idea. Instead of even trying to fight the dragon, he merely turned invisible. There was a small flash of light, and Harry knew he'd used Sonic Move or something similar to get out of the way quickly, but where that might be was unknown to Harry.

Isis had taken Harry's statement as a challenge. Well, either that or she had decided to play cat and mouse with the dragon. Her strong magical shields were the only thing that stopped the dragon swatting her out of the sky, but she seemed to be trying to do something.

"Chain Bind!" She called out, after one of the dragon's claws had passed her by. She then dragged the chains behind her as she flew over the dragon's back and began to entangle the dragons other front claw in the same chain, effectively binding them behind its back.

"Well I did say to be creative." Harry muttered to himself as he saw Isis extend the chains even further and began to tie the dragon up in a bewildering array of knots and tangles. "That wasn't quite what I had in mind though." He shrugged. The dragon would break free of those chains eventually, what Isis had done was only a temporary measure after all.

"Panzerschild." Harry said mildly, raising a shield to his left. "Restrict Lock." He glanced over and gave a frustrated Loki a grin. "Illusions are a speciality of mine as well, did you really think I wouldn't look up ways to counter them?" He asked, mirth evident in his voice.

Harry felt something at his back, and looked over his shoulder to see the silhouette of Isis with her weapon pointed right between his shoulder blades. His eyes widened and he looked down to where he could still see Isis dancing around the bound dragon. He laughed.

"Once Isis had bound the dragon, you switched her out for an illusion. Then, knowing I'd notice you, you distracted me while Isis sneaked up behind me! Nice, really nice. Also, very tricky, and something that definitely earns you the name of Loki." Harry conceded.

Harry's face then fell, as he looked up in the sky. "No! She's not... is she?" Loki and Isis looked up as well, and what they saw made their jaws drop.

"Oh, heck no." He looked at Harry. "Temporary truce?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'll agree to that." Harry agreed.

The reason these three had decided to team up for now? Reinforce.

It seemed that the Unison Device had finally decided to enter into the spar, but she had decided to do so in a very big way. Harry wondered if she could have thought of a more impressive way to enter the fight, there was little that could top a Starlight Breaker after all.

Up above, high in the air, Reinforce looked down on the other three. Loki and Isis had taken her non-combative attitude as a way to avoid her and focus on Harry. Harry himself had gotten in some practise against multiple foes, as she'd intended, but now that Harry had been caught out, it was time to end things with a bang.

"I summon the light of destruction down on my prisoners. Stars, gather, and become the light that pierces everything. Tear through everything in a blaze of light. Starlight Breaker!" She yelled, throwing the attack at them with as much power as she could.

She saw three shields go up, Harry's standard Panzerschild, Loki's Round Shield, and Isis' more powerful Multi-Defenser. Reinforce had put a lot of power into it though, and she had gathered up all of the mana that was left hanging in the air from Harry's fight with Loki and Isis.

The large pink blast tore through both Harry's Panzerschild and Loki's Round Shield without much difficulty, but it was stopped by Isis' Multi-Defenser. The three of them appeared from out of the blast and she could see Harry signalling his surrender, actions being copied by both Isis and Loki.

Looking down towards Septima and Beth, she could just make out their gob-smacked expressions. She wondered how much more shocked they would look if told that the spell was a collection type, meaning it didn't matter if they didn't have much energy for it, because it used ambient mana instead.

Oh, that would be something to see indeed.


	5. End of the Summer

AN: Chapter five of RC here. A few people have been asking me when the Potter and MGLN groups are really going to start interacting, and I thought I may as well give some answers here. The MGLN cast are going to become more involved the coming winter. Those who know their time-line might know what significant event happens at that time, and I'm wondering who can actually answer that without looking it up. Now, some people have been asking about a few other things, so I'll put answers here. One: Harry is giving up secrets to Septima and Beth. No, he's not. As far as those two are aware, Harry is using some rather special and advanced Arithmancy backed up with really large mana reserves. He hasn't told them anything about his connection to Reinforce, nothing about life on other planets or anything like that. Two: Can't something be done about Harry's facial scars on Mid-Childa or something. Yes, they could, but that's not going to happen for several reasons. One, Harry no longer cares about them, and in a way, is slightly proud of them. Two, Harry has no medical record, and he doesn't want to give them a reason to go digging into his past and coming up blank. Three, Harry simply hasn't thought about doing it, not knowing how advanced or otherwise modern medicine is on Mid-Childa or elsewhere. Three: Why aren't people reacting to Harry's scars? They are, but since the story is from Harry's point of view and Harry is ignoring it, it hasn't been mentioned. Part of the next chapter will be from Snape's point of view, and it will receive a mention there, don't worry.

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 5 – End of the Summer

Reinforce had been right, the expression on their faces had been absolutely priceless. The pair of them had been absolutely gob smacked at the level of destruction that a Starlight Breaker had been able to achieve, safely confined to her barrier of course.

The fact that such a spell didn't actually use a person's own mana reserves, but the ambient mana in the environment, was the cherry on the cake. Septima got a hungry gleam in her eyes, and Reinforce thought that the Arithmancy professor would be bugging Harry to teach her that skill for the coming year until he caved.

Out of the corner of her eye, Reinforce took another look at Harry. It was nice to see him relaxing around people and making friends. Granted, said friends were about two decades older than himself, but they were probably the only wizards or witches he truly could call his friends.

The fact he didn't need to be so cautious about one of his secrets also seemed to make Harry relax that. Yes, it was true that he hadn't really given away any big secrets, as far as Septima and Beth knew Harry was simply using some incredibly complex Arithmancy after all, but the idea was there.

She doubted he would reveal his more personal secrets, his odd relationship with herself, the knowledge of life on other planets, things like that. She also doubted he would tell them about the fact that the Potters were still alive, but maybe Hound and Madam Bones would drag that into the light.

Harry's phone went off, making the boy blink, then answer it. "Hello?"

"Yes, why do you ask?"

"Oh, oops."

"So what do they know?"

"Well that's good, it could have been far worse."

"Right, right, I was careless. It won't happen again, I promise."

"Okay, bye."

_~Who was that, Harry?~_ Reinforce telepathically asked him.

_~Signum.~_ He replied, sending it to Isis and Loki as well. _~It seems we were a little careless with our sparring match. The TSAB are now aware that a large amount of mana was used 'somewhere in England'. Thankfully, they don't know anything more than that, but it was a close thing. Signum says that England, and Europe by extension, are now going to be under closer scrutiny than Japan, where everything else on this planet has mostly happened.~_

_~Ah.~_ Loki said. _~I guess we did go a little overboard when we agreed to showcase some Belkan and Mid-Childan magic for these two. What do you plan to do now, master?~_

Harry gave the telepathic equivalent of an eye roll. _~Nothing different to what I was already going to do. So what if the TSAB became aware of our little sparring session? The Terran wards are strange, and it was only when Reinforce became accustomed to them that she became able to detect them. As long as they don't come into contact with the Wizarding World, there's no reason for the TSAB to become aware of the magical community on Earth.~_

_~So it's a case of 'be careful, but don't really change anything', is it?~_ Isis asked.

Harry mentally snorted at how she had put it, but she was right. They closed that line of thinking, returning to talking with Septima and Beth. The two professors had noticed how their guests had seemingly zoned out slightly, but didn't comment on it, letting Harry and his company keep their secrets. Instead, they talked about the theory behind the magic they'd just seen, and that was how they spent the rest of the day.

xxxxx

"You have a visitor, Madam Bones."

The head of the DMLE looked up as she heard her secretary announce a visitor. She asked who it was, and heard that it was a silver-haired woman with red eyes, calling herself Reinforce. She apparently had no wand on her, and nothing else that seemed to be a weapon, so Amelia allowed her through to see her.

"Can I help you?" Amelia asked. This woman was most certainly odd-looking, but two things grabbed her attention. One of them was the colour of her eyes, and another was the colour of her hair. Her eyes were the exact same shade of red that Harry Potter's left one was, and her hair was the same shade of silver as the streak in said boy's hair. Now that she looked at her, this 'Reinforce' woman did bear a more than passing similarity to Harry Potter.

"I am here so that Harry isn't ambushed by crowds." Reinforce said. "If you want, we can meet up with him now. He did say something about you and Hound asking him to come to the Ministry about something or other, so we can get that done now if you want to."

Amelia looked at the paperwork on her desk, the bane of any Department head, and shrugged her shoulders. There was always paperwork to do, taking an hour or two off from it wouldn't change anything. She stood up, and followed this Reinforce woman out of the door, examining her closely as she did so.

The woman didn't seem dangerous, just from a glance, but Amelia knew all about how misleading appearances could be. This Reinforce woman was beautiful, that was instantly apparent, and rather exotic looking. As they walked down the corridor, she did draw a lot of attention to herself, and she overheard a few muttered questions as to whether she was an albino or something, due to her eye and hair colour.

Reinforce and Madam Bones headed down to the Atrium, and then walked over to where three people were waiting for them. Amelia immediately made note of who they were, as she was looking for something she could see it straight away. Two of them, despite missing their animal appendages, were obviously Mr. Potter's familiars, so that meant the other one was Mr. Potter himself.

All three of them were under simple illusions, changing their skin and hair colour so they weren't recognised. All three of them sported a tan, something they didn't underneath the illusions, Loki's hair was no a mid-brown colour, as were his eyes. Isis was dressed more conservatively than she usually was, and her hair was blonde instead of white, her eyes now being a deep green.

Harry Potter's illusion masked his scarred face, changed his hair colour to a dirty blonde, and had his eyes a baby blue colour. The illusion also covered up and hid his forehead, making it so that any lightning bolt scar that may or may not have been there could not be seen.

Madam Bones didn't say anything, not sure whether they'd used fake names and what they might be if they had. Instead, she merely indicated the lift, and had them follow her into it. She pressed the appropriate button for the Department of Mysteries and waited in the lift while it headed downwards.

She glanced over the people in there with her, and had to look again when she saw that the woman named Reinforce was missing. She gave Harry a stern look when he chuckled at her, noticing her looking around for the missing woman, but that didn't deter him in the slightest.

When the lift did reach the appropriate floor, the doors opened to reveal an Unspeakable standing right in front of them. "Welcome to the Department of Mysteries, Mr. Potter and company. If you wish to retrieve the item mentioned in a certain letter, follow me."

"Hello again, Unspeakable Hound." Harry replied, following after the Unspeakable. "I'd like to hear exactly what this prophecy says."

xxxxx

"That's it?" Madam Bones asked.

They were currently stood in the Hall of Prophecy, having just listened to the prophecy that Harry had taken off the shelf. She was a little creeped out at how empty the place was. She knew that there were at least forty Unspeakables in the department, but they had not encountered one yet.

"Yes, that's it." Hound replied.

"That was bloody vague." Madam Bones muttered to herself. "It could mean absolutely anything. A case could be made no matter what happens in the future, and it could be 'true'." She sounded rather frustrated.

Hound laughed lightly. "That's the case with a lot of prophecies. Heck, the prophecy doesn't state which year the child will be born in, nor does it say which Dark Lord will be defeated. It does not say how they will be defeated, or anything like that. I guess this thing is simply useless."

Madam Bones made a sound of disgust. "I guess I was just hoping for something we could use, something to get rid of this Dark Lord problem that bit earlier. I am _not_ sitting around, waiting for something to happen to end it, I'm more proactive than that. It would so help if we knew _how _Harry here survived that damned curse."

"Speaking of which," Harry piped up. "Is there anything knew there? Have you found out anything regarding the Potters and where they might be?"

"Yes and no." Hound replied. "You've got to understand, for every way there is to magically track someone down, there's probably a dozen or more ways to stay hidden. That's the biggest problem we have when Dark Lords turn up with their followers. They strike quickly and without warning, then disappear back to wherever they hide."

He shrugged. "We do have _some_ news though. Using methods only available to our department, I can tell you that they are not in Britain. It gets more difficult to search outside our borders, but we're also reasonably confident that they're not in Europe either. We're in the process of sweeping America, but we do have some suspicions about where we might find them."

"Would you care to share these suspicions?" Amelia asked. "You do realise that, if I can get a hold of them, I can have them up on charges. Faking your own death carries a penalty to it, and depending on certain other... things, there are several other charges that I might be able get on them." There was some heat in Amelia's voice, and Harry wondered what had her riled up like she was. He decided not to ask, if it was important then he'd find out sooner or later.

"Well, we think they're probably in Canada." Hound told them. This seemed to make sense to Amelia, but Harry and his familiars didn't know what was so important about Canada and so asked why they thought they might be there.

"You know how in the muggle world, Swiss banks tend to be used for slightly shady deals, right? This is to do with certain laws that apply in other places, but not there and so on. Well, Canada is similar, in a sense at least. The main magical community there is out of the way, and no one really asks any questions, it's large enough to disappear into, but they also get news about the rest of the world as well. In other words, it's the perfect place to go if you want to disappear but keep up to date with events elsewhere in the world." Hound explained.

"I... see." Harry replied hesitantly.

"Don't worry about it, Harry." Amelia told him. "Just let us deal with things. If they are in Canada, and we do find them there, we may be able to drag things out into the light of day by next summer hopefully. We should find them, they can't survive in complete isolation, they'll need food and other things as well if nothing else."

"Now," Hound said, turning to Harry. "I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions of mine." Harry blinked at him and gave a curious look. "Strange things have been happening lately. I don't know whether you know about it, but there were some incredibly powerful, but unusual magical readings in Japan a year and a half ago, as well as a while before that. Strangely enough, there were similar readings in England recently."

"And you think I know what's going on, why exactly?" Harry asked.

"Well, I'm sure you know about people trying to track you over the summer. Of course, being the 'Boy-Who-Lived', there are a fair number of people who'd want to keep track of you. I, for one, know that you went to Japan, the same area that certain events happened in recent years. After that, though, you completely disappeared, and even the Department of Mysteries couldn't find out where you went. When you got back, we managed to put you back on our radar, and you just so happened to be there when that surge happened in England." Hound told him.

"You're stalking me?" Harry said. "Should I be filing charges?" He asked Madam Bones.

That comment got a sort of strangled laugh out of Amelia, and Hound's shoulders slumped. "You know, normally people are intimidated by me doing something like that. I know I can't demand answers, and it would be illegal to force them out of you, but I'd appreciate you telling me _something_."

Harry thought about it for a moment. He really wanted the DMLE and the Department of Mysteries on his side if it came down to it, but he didn't want to give away any super massive secrets either. He decided on a bit of a compromise, and gave them the best answer he could.

"I do know what happened in Japan." He told them. "However, I am not the right person to speak to about what actually did occur there. What happened in England was a demonstration for... friends. Seeing how much you found out about me, I'm sure you can find out where I was, and who those friends would be." Hound nodded his head. He was aware that there had been two witches there as well, and who they were, but he wasn't going to say who it was, and he doubted they'd know much about it even if he did try and interrogate them.

"Is what happened in Japan, and what you were involved with in England, likely to become a threat to the British Wizarding World?" Madam Bones asked, getting right to the point.

"No." Harry replied simply. "If anything, it would be quite the opposite really. I'm sorry for not telling you more, but a lot of it is not mine to tell, and other bits of it are things I don't want to tell."

"Fine by me." Hound shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, I am going to try and find out what's going on, and I will try and get you to slip up, but apart from being illegal, demanding answers out of an innocent kid will probably just get me on someone's hit list, especially if it's you."

"Very well, I suppose." Madam Bones sighed. "I don't like having such large magical events going on when I don't know what's going on. I'd love an oath, but I don't know how I'd go about wording something like that without leaving a dozen loopholes in it."

Harry, getting an idea, drew his wand. "I, Harry James Potter, do swear on my life and magic, that, as far as I am aware, the events that happened in Japan, Uminari City, in regards to the Jewel Seeds and the Book of Darkness, are no longer a threat to anyone on the planet Earth, nor will be again. So mote it be." There was a flash of light as the oath took hold, and Harry staggered a bit, feeling his entire mana reserve fuelling the oath.

"Jewel Seeds? Book of Darkness?" Hound muttered to himself. "Now I have a name for these things, I can look through the Department's records." Harry knew that wouldn't lead him anywhere, they didn't originate on Earth after all, but it would give Hound something to occupy his time with, and something for Harry to frustrate him with.

Amelia sighed. "Well, that oath makes me feel a bit better about these things." She then gave Harry her most stern glare. "However, I want an oath to the effect that, if you ever hear about anything, anything at all, that might be a threat to the British Magical World, then you will inform me of it as soon as you can."

Harry agreed and gave the oath. He worded it in such a way that he would only be compelled to tell her about it if the threat was to Britain and its population, so he wouldn't be forced to tell her every little thing. Besides that, there was a loophole in that oath, if Harry didn't think it was a threat, then he wouldn't be compelled to do anything, it was all a matter of mental discipline.

xxxxx

"What's on your mind?" Reinforce asked, back in Harry's room in the Leaky Cauldron. "I can tell that you're thinking about something, and thinking about it quite deeply, so what is it?"

"The 'power he knows not'." Harry replied. "It's so vague that anything could fill it. It sounds important though, so it stands to reason that 'the power he knows not' isn't dropping a boulder on his head that has an invisibility spell cast on it. I mean, being invisible, he wouldn't know it was there, but these prophecies sound rather... poetic."

"That sounds about right. With the way the prophecy is worded, it implies that 'love', 'peace', 'joy' or something like that could be the 'power he knows not'." Loki nodded. "Something like that would be 'poetic', and being a 'Dark Lord', that would be his anti-thesis or something like that."

"Maybe..." Isis began. Harry let his eyes flicker over to her and glanced at the book in her hands. The book was titled 'Potions for the Perverted'. Harry's lips formed a thin line, and he wondered where the bloody heck she'd gotten that book from.

"No, Isis, just no. I can see where your thoughts are going, especially considering what potion you're looking at, and the answer is hell no!" Isis pouted at that, and Loki leaned over to look at what potion Isis was reading up on, and so did Reinforce.

Loki choked back a laugh, and Reinforce blushed scarlet. That was too much for the two familiars though, and they soon collapsed onto the floor in fits of giggles. Reinforce tried to speak several times, but the words just wouldn't come out of her mouth, she'd rather been taken aback by what she'd read over Isis' shoulder.

"Isis, I'm going to be keeping a close eye on what you're doing this year at Hogwarts. If I see ingredients start to disappear, especially ingredients for _that_ potion, then I am not going to be happy." Harry told her, making the unicorn pout.

"Aww, but why? It could be very _interesting_, no?" She asked with a lewd grin on her face.

"Just no, Isis. Just no." Harry told her firmly.

Isis huffed. "Fine."

"I can see you've got your fingers crossed, Isis, I'm not stupid, nor am I blind." Harry leaned forwards and grabbed the hand that had said fingers crossed.

In return, Isis changed her grip on Harry's hand and began to massage it. She came closer to Harry, who leaned back to get away, He ended up flat on his back with Isis above him, She then lowered herself so she was laid flat on top of him and began whispering things in his ear.

Poor Harry's brain was fried by this and he really didn't know what to do. Loki was proving to be no help at all, merely watching what was going on and laughing to himself. Reinforce tried to get Isis to stop it, but Isis merely rolled over on the bed in Harry's room, somehow managing to trap Reinforce's arm between herself and Harry.

This caused Reinforce to fall on the bed as well, in such a way that she landed right on top of Harry. Surprisingly, the two of them ended up kissing completely by accident, and the pair of them blushed bright red. The two of them slowly got up and turned to the laughing familiars, specifically the madly grinning Isis.

Their hair had fallen in front of their faces, and each of them held up a hand.

"Divine Shooter." Reinforce muttered.

"Photon Lancer." Harry muttered.

"Oh, cra-" Was all Isis had time for, before the shots were fired at her.

xxxxx

On September first, Harry found himself on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters with Isis and Loki stood either side of him. For some reason, when he had first arrived at the platform, the barrier had been solid and hadn't allowed him through. He thought that he might just have been too early, it _had_ been eight o'clock in the morning after all.

He'd waited, and waited some more, but the barrier still hadn't opened. Reinforce, from inside Harry, had begun a detailed examination of the barrier, looking at the magic that made it up and comparing it to things she knew of. She had found the part of the spell that was denying Harry through, and had been in the process of isolating it, when the barrier had finally opened and let Harry in,

It had been rather suspicious, and Harry thought that he was being let through more due to the build up of people waiting for access than anything else. Still, Reinforce now had a sample of whatever magic had been blocking him, and she could compare it to others at a later time.

All they knew right now was that the magic signature seemed to be that of a house elf. Why a house elf would want to prevent Harry getting on the platform, none of them knew, but that was what it seemed to be. Harry thought it possible that the house elf was acting under orders from someone else, possibly someone at school that didn't like Harry and wanted to get him in trouble. That didn't really help matters though, as the only person at school that Harry really had a problem with was Draco Malfoy.

Once through the barrier, Loki and Isis relaxed their forms, and allowed their animal traits to show again. While they had quickly managed to achieve the shape-shift that hid their animal features, both were much more comfortable in their hybrid forms, and that was what they would always go back to whenever they could.

On the platform itself, Isis, in her rather revealing clothes, got a lot of appreciative looks from the males that saw her. It was interesting to compare the different reactions when they noticed her equine tail and ears though. The purebloods tended to look away in disgust, while others merely looked on in confusion. There were other reactions though, curiosity being one of them, but those were the main two.

Seeing as he didn't really have anyone to say goodbye to, Harry simply got straight on the train. Being early, he had the advantage of choosing which carriage he wanted to spend the journey in, and picked one at the back of the train. It was interesting that the train supposedly resized itself depending on the size of the student body, it was a bit of magic that had Harry really curious.

Inside 'his' compartment, Harry took a seat on one side, Isis and Loki sitting across from him. Harry dug out one of the books for the coming year and tried to read it. Unfortunately, he found the Lockhart books rather distasteful. It wasn't as if they were wrong or something, because the information inside them was mostly accurate, with only a few glaring errors, but it was how they were written that Harry didn't like.

They were written like fiction, full of action and drama, rather than statistics, facts and simple information. Harry had tried to find more information on the events described in the books, and he found that there were in fact witnesses to the events, proving that it actually happened, but Harry still didn't like it.

Harry looked up at Isis after a while, having his attention distracted from the book by the unicorn familiar playing 'footsies' with him. Loki chuckled at it, but Harry merely sighed and put the book away. He'd already gone through the books and compiled all of the facts in them. Once all of the flowery language had been stripped away from them, he only had two sheets of parchment per book that he really needed to know, which was rather disappointing.

"I'm so glad that I bought some other books, in addition to these stories." Harry muttered, putting the Lockhart book back in his trunk and pulling out another one. This book, instead of being by Lockhart, was called 'Advanced Numerical Concepts' by Damien Cane, and was a book on Arithmancy that Septima had suggested he read.

The next time Isis tried to distract Harry by playing 'footsies' with him, he simply conjured some rocks, transfigured them into multi-coloured rabbits and then had them attack her. A fun fact that Harry had learned was that Isis was very ticklish, and he had the rabbits gang up on her, snuffling at her ticklish spots and making her roll around laughing.

"It's your own fault for wearing such revealing clothing, you know." Loki admonished her. "If you wore something more conservative, the bunnies wouldn't be able to get at you like that."

"Oh, am I interrupting something?" A voice at the door asked. Harry and Loki looked up to see Luna Lovegood there, Isis was still busy with the rabbits tickling her sensitive spots.

"No, not at all." Harry told her. "If you want to, you can come in and join us. Try not to stand on Isis, but I understand that your foot might slip."

"Thank you, I think I will." Luna entered the compartment and took the window seat on the same bench that Harry was sat on. She opened a magazine of some sort, and Harry saw that it was called 'The Quibbler'. He wondered what sort of publication it was, but he didn't pay it much attention.

"I thank you for the birthday gift, but I must ask why you sent me one, and why you chose that particular book. It was a surprise to me to see it, especially because it's written in a language I did not expect anyone here to know." Harry said.

He was surprised when Luna put the magazine down and a big smile lit up her face. "You can read it?" She asked. "Oh, Daddy will be so happy. We found that book years ago, but we couldn't find anyone to translate it. We tried to find the creatures in it, but we haven't had much luck so far. We know they're out there, we just have to find them." She said firmly.

Harry blinked at her, shook his head, then spoke up. "I'm sorry to say this, Miss Lovegood, but most of the creatures in that book are extinct, and I doubt you will find the others either. The creatures in that book tend to live... very far away from here." Harry said carefully.

Honestly, Harry was a little disappointed. He had kind of hoped that Luna would know about Dimensional Space, and be someone he could share his secrets with, but that didn't seem to be the case. Still, he wondered what series of events would have led to an Ancient Belkan book being found on Earth by a human girl, it sounded very improbable to him.

"Oh, is that so." Luna seemed to droop at that, before picking back up again. "You said _most_ of them are extinct, yes? That means that some of them at least are still out there. I'm sure that Daddy and I will find them someday. Thank you, Harry Potter, for letting us know this."

"You're... welcome." Harry said a little hesitantly, this Luna seemed like an odd girl.

The compartment door opened again.

"Harry!" A familiar voice said, and Harry turned to see a smiling Hermione that hugged him tightly, before taking a seat next to him and between him and Luna.

_~She seems happy to see you~_ Isis telepathically said to Harry.

_~Cut out the perversion, Isis.~ _He replied. _~You're right though, I wonder why that is. I'm not exactly a friend, but we are on good terms. Hmm, maybe something has changed since last year? It doesn't matter really, nothing's really changed from my point of view.~_

Harry didn't get much chance to talk with Isis, Loki, or Reinforce after that, Hermione kind of dominated the conversation. Harry kind of tuned her out though, especially when she began to sing Lockhart's praises. It seemed she had something of a crush on the man, but one bit did break through to Harry.

"Wait, did you just say that he's going to be our Defence instructor this year?" Harry asked.

"Yes, isn't that really amazing! Have you read his books, how many things he's done? I'm sure he'll be an absolutely wonderful teacher." Harry ignored the hearts in Hermione's eyes and focused his attention inwards.

_~Hey, Reinforce, if I take out Lockhart, would you consider taking on the Defence position?~_ He asked.

Reinforce laughed at that, despite knowing that Harry was not entirely joking.


	6. Back at School

AN: And he's back at Hogwarts. There's probably a few more errors in this chapter than I'd like, my spell checker decided that it didn't like me any more and it now doesn't work AT ALL, so I'm relying completely on my beta to pick up anything I didn't. Now, a reviewer left an interesting note for me, a pairing idea. Now, I know that _everyone_ pretty much ships NanoFate, but this is fan fiction, we can do what we want with it. So, instead of my planned pairing of either Harry/Reinforce or Harry/Hayate, what do people think about a potential Harry/Fate pairing? I do have some ideas about how this might work, and it could give the characters more depth. I've always wondered why Fate wasn't the slightest bit envious of Nanoha. Compared to Fate, she had an almost perfect life, a loving family and that whole thing, so wouldn't she be, I don't know, a little bitter? If that's the case, and I am breaking up Nanoha and Fate, my mind was assaulted by this little bunny (hehe, bunny) about a possible Nanoha/Vita pairing. This might sound a little odd, but think about it. Outside of having Hayate as her master, who does Vita seem closest to? Nanoha, right? Anyway, pairings will turn up in third year at the earliest, so there's still a lot of time until anything like that happens. I hope I got Severus okay in this chapter, his bit was one of the things I am most concerned about and feedback would be much appreciated there. There was something else I wanted to ask, but it's slipped my mind right now, so I guess that's that.

Please enjoy the chapter.

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 6 – Back at School

Harry's eyes flickered over the two witches in the compartment with him and had to hide a smile. Luna was a bright girl, Harry could tell that straight away, and Hermione was by no means an idiot, she was one of the top three scorers from their year group, along with himself and Blaise Zabini.

Still, just because they were both intelligent, that didn't mean the two could really get along. It seemed that, since neither Luna nor her father could read that book of hers, they had attributed seemingly random traits to them. Hermione was a by the book girl though, which was one of her irritating traits, and she completely refused to believe such creatures existed.

Harry, now sitting between Loki and Isis and opposite the other two girls, was amused by the way the two interacted. Luna's serene calm in the face of Hermione's adamant denial was just so funny. He almost forgot about the book he'd been reading, but he did use it to whack Isis over the head when her hands started to wander all over him.

The unicorn familiar pouted, but Harry knew that the hit hadn't really hurt her much, he hadn't put a great deal of force into it after all. Hermione seemed to get a look in her eyes when she glanced at Harry as he interacted with Isis, but Harry couldn't identify it, and it was gone in a flash anyway.

_~Hey, master.~_ Harry blinked, not having expected Loki to initiate a mental conversation with him.

_~Yes, Loki?~_ He sent back, curious as to what the Raven familiar might want to talk about.

_~There's just something that's been on my mind for a while. You remember that oath you swore to Madam Bones, right? Well, my question is just why the Wizarding World needs a court and trial system? I mean, all they would have to do is swear an oath that they didn't do it and they would be cleared, right?~_ Loki asked curiously.

Harry gave a mental chuckle. _~Things are, unfortunately, a lot more complicated than that. For one thing, the oath I swore to Madam Bones was incomplete. To have made it a fully binding oath, or as binding as they get at least, Madam Bones would have had to accept it as well. It was a more a sign of good will on my part more than anything else.~_

_~What else is there to it? You said 'for one thing', so what else is there to oaths?~_ Loki sent back.

Harry got his thoughts in order for a moment. _~Well, one thing is that the words spoken don't actually matter. I'm sure you realise that magic isn't something that can be bound or affected by a human made language. It is the intent that is most important, and actually verbalising the oath simply makes the mind focus on it, binding the speaker to the oath. Another thing is Occlumency, one of the mind arts, with which a person can 'convince' themselves that they aren't actually breaking the oath they took. It can be noted that official oaths tend to be very long and include a lot of clauses, descriptions, explanations, and so on.~_

_~And the penalty for breaking an Oath?~ _Loki asked.

_~That depends.~_ Harry replied. _~The oath I swore to Madam Bones was 'on my life and magic'. Now, that is similar to a knight of mediaeval England swearing on his honour, more a formality than anything truly binding. Still, if I do knowingly and willingly go against the oath, my health will suffer, and my magic may be a bit weaker or more difficult to control.~_ Harry shook his head slightly.

_~What? Did you think that I would instantly die if I put a toe out of line? No, it was nothing like that. Like I said, intent is very important. If Voldemort makes a move that I believe will affect the witches and wizards of Britain, then I will feel somewhat compelled to inform Madam Bones of it. If, however, a criminal from another planet did randomly appear in England, then I would not be compelled to inform her of it, because that comes under the jurisdiction of the TSAB, and I had no intention of revealing anything about things like that to her.~_ Harry's eyes flickered over to Loki who appeared deep in thought.

_~Madam Bones does not seem like a stupid woman, and I have no doubt that she believes you will find ways around your oath, so wouldn't this do more harm to your relationship with her and that Unspeakable than good?~_ Loki wondered.

_~Politics, Loki, politics.~_ Harry thought at the familiar. _~Of course Madam Bones knows I am keeping secrets, that was blatantly obvious, but that is to be expected. What my oath actually did was let Madam Bones know I would pass on any volatile information I received to her. Her niece is a student here, and I have no doubt that Amelia thoroughly reads every letter she gets sent, but more people means more information, and being who I am, I am more likely to come across sensetive information.~_

_~I'm getting a headache from all of this. You know what, I'm just going to let you handle that kind of thing, and trust you to know what you're doing.~_ Loki rolled his eyes, causing Harry to chuckle. That drew the attention of Luna, Hermione, and Isis. The first of the three just blinked at Harry, before going back to her magazine. Hermione shot Harry and Loki quizzical looks, as if she wanted to know what the two were thinking.

Isis also wondered what the two had been thinking. Unlike Hermione, she knew that the two had probably been communicating telepathically, but that still didn't mean she knew what they had been talking about. She got a smile on her face though as her hands began to wander again, managing to wrap one of them around Harry's waist and lay the other one on his thigh before he realised what she was doing.

She then leaned heavily on him moulding herself into his side. Loki, being accustomed to how Isis acted towards Harry, just chuckled at her. Luna cocked her head to one side at it, and kept her rather creepy gaze locked on them. Hermione started to turn red at the sight, especially considering how little Isis wore, and she began to sputter as she attempted to tell the unicorn familiar off.

Harry had just given in, this time at least, and ignored her while he got back to reading his book. That lasted until Isis started to gently blow into his ear, and he started to get twitchy. He managed to keep things together until she started to whisper some rather suggestive things into his ear, at which point he latched out.

"Eep!" Isis cried, ducking until the book that Harry held in his hand. "Hey, wait a moment, your hair has changed again." Isis said, noticing that Harry had unisoned with Reinforce while he'd lashed out with his book. That made Harry pause, blink, and then carefully cancel the unison.

Harry leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Isis wisely decided not to try anything for now, realising that something was up. It was something that both she and Loki had noticed. Harry and Reinforce, intentionally or not, had been accidentally unisoning with each other more often lately, and that was cause for concern.

Of course, the fact that the two of them were beginning to feel whatever emotions the other was experiencing was just something else to worry about. The problem was that they didn't know who they could really talk to about this. Reinforce had done a scan of her own memories, to see if there was anything hidden in the depths of her memory that might explain it, but she had come up blank, and uncovered something else rather worrying.

Some of Reinforce's own memories were missing, and it had only been when actively searching that she'd actually noticed it. That was something big, really big, that they were concerned about. Reinforce thought that she might have lost them when she had almost been terminated, when she'd first met Harry, but now she couldn't know exactly what else she might have missed, or how important it might have been.

Still, this unisoning at random times was rather strange, and not something they really could get help with. To the TSAB, Reinforce was still the will of the Book of Darkness, and that would open up a can of worms that should really be left alone. It wasn't like they could talk to anyone on Earth either, goodness knows what the Ministry would do if they knew that Reinforce was a unique, one of a kind, magical weapon of mass destruction created by an ancient culture from space.

Harry kept rather quiet for the rest of the journey to Hogwarts, only remembering to get off the train when Isis nudged him when the train stopped. Once he'd gotten off the train and had wandered towards the carriages, one thing did make him halt his steps.

"So that's a thestral." Harry muttered under his breath. The odd-looking beasts were rather intimidating at first appearances, but Harry was almost instantly fascinated by them. They looked incredibly thin and bony, their skeletons being visible just underneath their taught skin. Their wings looked rather demonic, but it fit with the rest of them, and Harry found himself appreciating the beauty of such creatures greatly.

"Would you look at me more if I'd been a thestral and not a unicorn?" Isis muttered, pouting as she saw how much attention Harry had focused on the thestrals. Harry shook his head, gave Isis a small smile, and pulled the unicorn into a hug that she visibly enjoyed.

Harry then got into one of the carriages with Isis and Loki, Katie Bell taking the fourth and final seat as her usual companions, Alicia Spinnet and Angelina Johnson, took a carriage with Fred and George Weasley. Katie Bell did look curiously at Harry, having heard a little about him from the Weasley twins, who had interacted with him more than she had.

She wasn't blind, she could tell that Harry was distracted by something, and kept her mouth shut, not breaking his line of thought. Instead, she looked at Harry and his now almost as famous familiars.

Harry was a bit shorter than the others his age, but he was by no means a midget. His hair reached about his mid-back, and was black in colour, a single streak of silver on the left hand side. Right then, his hair was tied back into a ponytail. Harry's eyes were two separate colours, the left one being red and the right one green.

The scarring on half of his face was something that Katie tried not to focus on, but it was there, it was useless trying to deny it, and she found her eyes drawn back to it several times. In an effort to look at something other than the younger boy's scars, she looked at his familiars next.

Sat next to him, and draping herself all over him, was the one called Isis. The rumour that had went around school was that she had been a unicorn that somehow turned human. Of course, she had heard some rather crude comments from boys in higher years, and the way she dressed didn't really help matters much.

She was essentially wearing a sort of abbreviated waistcoat that left her stomach on display, short shorts, thigh high boots, and fingerless gloves, all of it in white. Her snow white hair had a single braid in the fringe, but mostly hung loose and flowed over her shoulders. She possessed a pair of startlingly bright blue eyes as well, and they were focused intently on Harry Potter. Her animal features, her horse ears and tail, were out and visible. Katie idly wondered what it would feel like to touch them, before she shook her head and forced the idea out of her mind. Touching someone else's familiar without permission was a bad thing to do in the Wizarding World, what would it be like for unique familiars like these?

Instead of looking at Isis any further, who seemed to be trying to climb into Harry's lap, Katie looked at the male sitting next to herself. Loki, as the raven familiar was called, was most definitely a handsome specimen. In fact, if it wasn't for his wings, which he normally kept flat against his back anyway, Katie thought it likely that even the pureblood girls would all have crushes on him.

Loki wore a black dragonhide trench coat that had a green trim, as well as designs of snakes scattered across it which were also in green. He wore army boots, black trousers, a black shirt with a silver raven design on it, and a silver pendant hung from around his neck.

Loki had obviously seen her looking, as he gave her a small smirk and a wink. Katie blushed at that, and turned away from him, looking out of the carriage and towards the castle. Loki just shook his head, took a look at Isis and Harry, and shook his head again.

xxxxx

Severus Snape watched with a sneer as the older students entered the Great Hall. He really did not want to be here, and wanted to teach little brats even less, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice. If he was a man with less self-control, he would have glanced at the headmaster then, but such a slip was below him.

Albus Dumbledore, Leader of the Light, and bearer of so many other titles. Severus knew he was safe with that man backing him, but it was the price that Dumbledore expected him to pay in return that really grated on him. Severus had no objection to being a Potions Master, it was a subject he loved after all, and brewing potions for the infirmary and whatever else was needed did not irk him in the slightest.

Even teaching wasn't something that was _too_ bad, as far as a single apprentice, maybe two, went, but trying to instruct a room full of childish brats was something completely different. If that wasn't bad enough by itself, he was being forced to teach the spawn of James Potter, his childhood tormenter.

Children were their parents, at least in Snape's experience they were. Draco Malfoy, Severus' own godson, was Lucius Malfoy in miniature. In looks they were near identical, Snape should know, Lucius had requested potions from him to make it so when Narcissa was still pregnant. Even ignoring the physical resemblance, Draco was Lucius' son, both of them coasted easily through life on their family name, both thought that gold could get them anything, and both thought themselves superior to everything and everyone else around them.

Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, another two that were the same as their parents, muscle-bound idiots that did the Malfoy family's bidding. Lavander Brown, the same as her mother, both of them being the 'pretty little things' that bared their flesh to tempt any that look their way. Hannah Abbot, just as much of a scaredy-cat as her mother had been at that age, and also huddled up to a more influential person, with her mother it had been David Abbot, and the daughter had cosied on up to Susan Bones, the neice of the head of the DMLE.

A group of students coming in the door drew Snape's attention, and his sneer became more pronounced. It seemed that the famous Harry Potter had deigned to grace them with his presence at this time, and following him were those two weird abnormalities of his.

Of course the son of James Potter could not help showing off. Severus had thought that maybe the child would take up some of his mother's traits, and at the start of the year, it had seemed so. The boy had inherited his mother's skill with potion brewing, as well as her skill in charms. That Harry Potter was also rather exceptional in all other subjects was just an added extra, something that made him better.

Then _things _began to happen. Severus knew that the Potter spawn was behind it all, and it was all just so he could achieve his father's vaunted position of most popular in school. His 'creation' of his unique familiars was the most obvious of it all, and something that really did piss off Severus immensely.

Severus had been a lonely child, Lily Evans being his first and, he would admit this only to himself, only true friend ever. Everyone else in Snape's life had been interested in what he could provide them, what use he could be to them. That was alright though, that was how Severus had treated them in turn, it was a mutually beneficial thing.

That a Potter was not only popular throughout his entire year, even with his own snakes minus Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, and had then created yet more people to worship him really did rankle. He stopped being a child that might take after Lily Evans, his pure, beautiful, intelligent, and truly amazing mother, and degenerated into the spawn of that bastard James Potter.

Maybe Potter wasn't even Lily's child. Everyone who looked at him could see his slightly Asiatic featuresm the slight tilt to his eyes, the shape of his face, his short height, yet no one seemed to have the guts to say anything about him. Now, some might have said that Lily might have cheated on James, because everyone knew she had been pregnant, but Severus knew that wasn't so, Lily had been perfect in everything. Well, she had been perfect in everything but taste, she could have chosen him over the school bully, but had rejected him.

Snape's eyes lingered on the discolouration on Potter's face, commiting the scars to memory. Now that he was no longer hiding his scars, and using them to get attention of course, there had been the whisper of questions, like those asking where he could have gotten such scars from.

Severus thought such injuries served him right, it was because of that child that Lily, his oh so beloved Lily, was dead. If Harry bloody Potter had not been born in July, then there would have been no reason for the Dark Lord to go after them. Hell, Severus would even accept James Potter being alive, very grudgingly and with a great deal of disgust, if only Lily was still alive.

Still, Severus would acknowledge one thing as strange about Potter. While one side of his face was scarred, there was no sign of the lightning bolt scar that should have been on his forehead. There had been those who had stared at Potter, for one reason or another, and the boy had ignored them all, completely blanking them out, and Severus had been one of them, albeit one that didn't make his examination obvious.

Severus was not looking forward to lessons this year, even less so than he had previously. Knowing that Harry Potter, son of James Potter, had scored the top mark in the end of year examination last year really was not something he liked. If at all possible, he would have found a way to score even the mudblood Granger higher, or, better still, Draco Malfoy, but no, Potter just had to hand in an absolutely perfect exam, one that even he couldn't detract points from.

xxxxx

Harry was not unaware of the eyes on him, but he wasn't really concerned about it either. While he and Professor Snape had not been on especially bad terms at the beginning of first year, something seemed to have soured Snape's opinion of him, and everything had gone downhill from there.

Even before that, Harry had put a great amount of effort in making sure his work was as good as it could be, but after that he had made doubly sure that his potions were as perfect as he could make them, not giving Snape anything to complain about.

Harry was still fairly out of it, relying on Loki and Isis to make sure that he didn't do anything stupid. All of his attention was focused inwards, he and Reinforce still trying to puzzle out what was going on with them. There was too much for them to really ignore.

Aside from the random unisons, Harry and Reinforce feeling each others emotions, and the resemblance they held with each other, all three of which were becoming more common and noticeable, there was also the fact that Harry's magic colour, a purpleish-black, was the same as Reinforces, and then there was how Harry was beginning to emulate Reinforce's mannerisms as well.

The non-Terran part of Harry's linker core, they had found, was essentially identical to Reinforce's, but that wasn't too unexpected. After all, before he had met Reinforce, as far as any of them knew, he was a purely Terran mage, a wizard, so her altering his core to resemble hers was not difficult to imagine.

Diving deeper into his core, giving it as thorough an examination as was possible, had revealed something a little unexpected. There was some kind of link between their cores, unnoticeable as it was. That was cause for concern, as neither of them could think about what something like that would do, nor _how_ it had come to exist in the first place.

Harry only really came to when the new first years entered the hall. The sorting hat sang a song, but it was a different one to the one that Harry remembered from last year. Looking up and down the line, Harry soon caught sight of Luna Lovegood, the odd girl from the book shop and the train.

_~Hello, Hat.~_ Harry telepathically connected to the Sorting Hat.

_~You again, Mr. Potter? Now, what reason do you have for contacting me this time?~_ The hat replied.

Harry mulled his thoughts over in his head. _~Do you know any reason that two peoples' magic would be... connected together?~_ He asked. He didn't really think the hat would know, but it was better to ask and be told no, than not ask when the information was available.

_~Oh! Now, that is an interesting bit of magic. I believe it is commonly reffered to as a Soul Bond.~_ The hat replied.

Harry blinked. _~A... Soul Bond? That sounds like something I'd read in a trashy romance novel.~_

The hat gave a mental chuckle. _~That might be so, and it is romantacised like that, but that's not the case. A Soul Bond isn't necessarily between two people who are romantically involved, although they can develop in those situations. No, it is more common for such bonds to appear amongst family members, between parents and children, siblings, etc. Actually, the most 'common' type of Soul Bond is what is sometimes called a 'Twin Bond'. The Weasley twins possess one of these, it's what allows them to start and finish each others sentences so easily. Is there any particular reason for you to ask about this, though? I must say, it's not a branch of magic that many people concern themselves with.~_

It was Reinforce that answered, piggy-backing on Harry's telepathic link to the hat. _~We don't know why, or even how it happened, but my core and Harry's are linked together. That is why he asked, it's not something we've ever really come across before.~_ That was true, the closest thing that Reinforce knew about was the parasitic nature the Book of Darkness had had with Hayate.

_~Hmm, now that is rather curious. You're not his mother, nor his siter, and not his daughter, so the familial bond is unlikely to form, especially considering it is usually 'helped along' by shared blood. Harry's a bit young to really be considering romance, so that's unlikely, and you are not subservient to him. I'm not saying either of those types of bonds are impossible, just that they're unlikely to form. Oh, this is an interesting girl!~_ The hat suddenly interrupted itself.

Glancing up, Harry saw that the hat now sat on the head of Luna Lovegood. He waited patiently while the hat focused on her sorting, not splitting its attention between their conversation and whoever was sat underneath it. After about three quarters of a minute, the hat called out "Ravenclaw!"

Harry clapped along with the rest of the table, before going back to his conversation with the hat. _~Do you know where we could find information on this type of magic?~_ Harry asked. It wasn't that he didn't trust the hat to give him accurate information, but it wouldn't know anything about how Harry's altered magic might be affecting such a bond.

_~There used to be a few books in the Restricted Section of the library.~_ The hat replied. _~Unfortunately, Dumbledore removed all books on Soul and Blood Magic when he became headmaster. While this might sound a bit controlling and restrictive, it was only because something he was involved in as a child that... scared him into over-reacting. All of those books now reside in the headmaster's office, and I don't think he's going to hand them out like he does those lemon drops of his.~_

Harry sighed at that. Considering his lack of trust towards the headmaster, he wasn't about to believe anything that came out of the old man's mouth. Still, if he wanted to understand what was going on inside himself, then he really might need access to those books.

Maybe he could, erm, _borrow_ them sometime. He would return them, obviously, but he might have to break into the headmaster's office to get at them. That would not be easy though. Aside from the obvious things, such as the password required to get in, whatever means Dumbledore used to identify who was at the door, and the possibility of the books being locked up, there were other obstacles to overcome.

The portraits of previous headmasters, despite feigning asleep, would undoubtedly take notice of anything that might happen. There might well be charms on the books, either tracking charms or preventative ones that would make it impossible to purloin them.

The hat would hopefully be on Harry's side though, and Fawkes might, _might_, lend a hand as well. He couldn't use James Potter's invisibility cloak though, that would be too much of a giveaway, and he would have to do it when Dumbledore would not be able to just randomly waltz in and catch him in the act, maybe while he was away at an ICW or Wizengamot gathering perhaps.

Harry would also require an alibi, depending on how discrete he would have to be, and some place to stash the books until he could read them. Now, with the TSAB observing Europe more closely than before, he would be limited in what Belkan and Mid-Childan magic he could use. A simple shooting spell wouldn't set them off, and nor would a Dimensional Transfer, unless they were specifically looking for it, but large spells, anything on the level of a Divine Buster or higher, should be avoided.

_~Now, this one might be off interest to you, Harry.~_ His thoughts and half-made plans were cut off as the hat spoke to him over their still open telepathic link. Looking over, Harry saw that there was a redheaded girl under the hat, Ginevra Weasley if he remembered right.

He hadn't really noticed her much when he'd been down Diagon Alley with the Weasleys. He threw his mind back, and tried to recall everything he could about her. He remembered that she had kept her distance from him, but had peeked at him when she thought he wasn't looking. He might have thought she was scared of him, if it wasn't for the vivid blush that stained her cheeks that was.

_~Why?~_ Harry asked, curious as to why he should pay her any special attention.

_~I can't reveal what is anyone's head, but I will say that she has the potential to be either your most sycophantic follower, or the creepiest of stalkers. Of course, she could always end up being fairly normal, you never know, do you?~_ The hat said, before sorting her into Gryffindor, where every Weasley had gone for more than three centuries.

The sorting soon ended, and the hat was returned to the Headmaster's office. After that, Dumbledore spoke a bit of gibberish, and then the feast was in progress. Harry ate little, not particularly hungry then, and spoke little as well. His fellow students could see he was rather distracted and left him alone for the most part. A few first years stared in awe, amazed that they were in the same house as the 'Boy-Who-Lived', but they weren't brave enough to begin a conversation with him.

After the feast, Harry headed straight of for Ravenclaw tower. He took a few shortcuts to get there before the prefects arrived with the first years, and was all ready to head on up to the second year dormitory and get some sleep, but his Head of House seemed to have something to say to him, and had gotten to the common room before he had.

"Ah, Mr. Potter." Flitwick said in his squeaky voice.

"Yes, Professor? Was there something you needed to speak with me about? I haven't even been back for a single night yet, so I can't see how I could have done something wrong." Harry replied.

Flitwick beamed at Harry. When the boy had started the previous year, he had spoken little, and interacted with his peers just as much. Now, while he might not seek out friendship like one of Pomona's puffs would, he was far more open, and seemed far happier as well.

"No, you haven't done anything wrong. This is more about your sleeping arrangements, due to... unusual events last year." Flitwick's eyes flickered over to Isis and Loki for a moment. "Seeing as the Head Boy graduated last year, and this year's is a Hufflepuff, you may make use of the Ravenclaw Head Boy suite."

Harry realised what he was saying. In the Head Boy's suite, Harry and his familiars would be separated from his former roommates, but it would also keep Isis out of the boy's dorm. Because she was a familiar, it was expected of Harry to keep her with him, but because she was a humanoid female, there was an issue with her being in the same room as a bunch of teenage boys. Honestly, he should have expected something like this last year, when she had become his familiar.

"I understand, Professor." Harry told Flitwick. "What is the password for the Head Boy's suite?" He asked.

Flitwick smiled at Harry, knowing that the boy had worked out exactly why he was being moved. He was a smart one, he was, and seemed to have received the best traits of both his parents. "Right now, it is set at 'Ravenclaw', but you should change it at least once a term."

Harry nodded and headed off to the door. He put one hand on the wall where the door was hidden, looked at the bronze eagle mounted on the wall and whispered the password at it. The wall seemed to melt, until a regualr wooden door was revealed which Harry went through.

On the other side, Harry had Reinforce check for any listening charms and the like. There turned out to be four, one of them he almost missed. One was right over the door on the way in, the second was in the bedroom part of the Head Boy suite, the third in the shower cubicle, and the fourth, the one that was almost missed, was on the glass of the window.

Once all of them had been removed, Harry changed the password to 'Wolkenritter', something that no one would be able to just guess outright. After that, he got changed into night clothes, fell on the bed, and was about to go to sleep, when he felt a weight next to him.

Beds had been provided for Loki and Isis, but because no one knew about her, there wasn't one for Reinforce, Having three beds in there made things a bit crowded, and Harry was pretty sure the room had been expanded to fit them, but Harry didn't overly mind.

He curled up next to Reinforce and ignored Isis' mutterings about how she wished she was sharing a bed with him. He fell asleep, wondering what this coming year was going to be like. He idly wondered what Lockhart's classes would be like, and came to the conclusion that it would probably be something to boost his publicity.

His last thought as he fell asleep was a question, or rather two: Was that supposed curse on the Defence position real and, if so, what would it do to get rid of Lockhart this year?


	7. First Day of Classes

AN: Well, I'm amused. The reactions to my previous AN (about a possible Fate/Harry pairing) seemed to get one of three results. The first result was 'What the heck are you doing! NanoFate is sacred, don't defile it!'. The second response I got was 'Sound's interesting, variety could be good.' The third reaction was 'F#&* that, just make it a harem, harems are best.' There were the sub-categories as well, things like a request for a Nanoha/Hayate pairing, and those that think Fate and Nanoha can get over any issues with rough lesbian sex. I'll just say this once, the story writes itself. If two characters seem to be getting into a relationship, then they'll be in a relationship. If not, then they won't be. I'm not going to force anything, I'm just saying that I'm open to the possibility. I'm also quite pleased with how popular Isis is, if I do say so myself. Oh, one more thing, Severus got some mixed reviews in my last chapter. One person said that Severus was being 'petty'. Excuse me for a moment while I say, 'yes, he was'. I don't get why so many people romanticize his relationship with Lily Evans. Was it love? No, it bloody wasn't, it was more of an obsession than anything else, and it was pretty creepy. There's also those saying 'Poor Severus, bullied by James Potter, doesn't get anything.' Let me also say, both James and Severus were petty little bullies. Sure, they both have redeeming qualities (When James sacrifices himself for Lily and Harry comes to mind), but that doesn't make them perfect! Oh, I seem to have rather rambled on here, so i think I'll just end my AN now.

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 7 – First Day of Classes

When Harry awoke the next morning, the first thing he took notice of was the fact that he was sandwiched between two warm bodies. Facing him, and where he had expected her to be, was Reinforce, so who was behind him? Having a pretty good guess who, Harry looked over his shoulder, and saw that, yes, Isis was using him as a teddy bear too.

"She is most certainly affectionate." Loki, who was stood in the doorway, already dressed, said.

"Yes, she is." Harry replied with fond exasperation. "How long have you been up?" He asked.

"Only about fifteen minutes." Loki told him. "I got myself washed and dressed, that's pretty much it. It's still early in the morning, only half six, so it might be a good opportunity to have a little sparring session if you want it."

Harry nodded his head. "Help me get out of this tangle of limbs, without waking them up, and I'll accept."

Loki chuckled, but stepped forward anyway, and helped Harry extricate himself from the two females. For nightwear, Reinforce wore a large shirt and knickers, while Isis was wearing the most sheer negligee that had probably ever been conceived.

Once out from between them, Harry went off to get a shower, then get dressed. When he got back to the bedroom, he saw that Reinforce and Isis were now cuddled up with each other, seeing as he was no longer separating them. He took a picture of it with his device, because it was a rather cute image.

He dressed himself after that, and had his device take on the form of a glaive. Loki's device was in the form of two short swords, and the two of them headed out. Deciding that an out of the way place would be best for their little sparring session, Harry and Loki headed off to the third floor corridor, where those traps for the Philosopher's Stone had been last year.

Dropping down through the trap door, Harry idly took note of the fact that the Devil's Snare had all been cleared out. Wandering into the next room, he saw that all of the flying keys were gone as well, only a few scratches on the wall indicating what had been there before.

The room that had held the giant chess set, and even now the floor was checkered black and white, was large enough for what the two of them were planning to do. They didn't need a massive space, as they couldn't let loose with more powerful spells. That was partly because the TSAB were now keeping a closer eye on Europe, but mostly because using highly destructive magic inside of the castle was likely to cause large scale damage, possibly causing it to become structurally compromised.

Harry and Loki stood across from each other, and both of them brought forth their personal defences. For Loki, that was his Knight Armour, while Harry's was his Combat Equipment. The both of them took a breath, before readying their weapons before them.

Loki's two sword style had one blade in front of him, while the other trailed slightly behind him, ready to strike out at an opponent from a blind spot if an opportunity presented itself. Harry held his glaive-shaped device in front of him, holding it diagonally across his body in a defensive stance.

Loki was the one to start things off, launching himself across the room towards Harry, aiming at Harry with his leading blade with a jab. Harry took a step back and to the side, ducking away from the attack, pushing it aside with the head of his device, before spinning it in his hand, knocking Loki's other blade up and away from himself.

Close quarters wasn't exactly a good place for a long weapon like a glaive though, and the advantage would be all Loki's if he remained so. A Sonic Move had Harry appearing behind Loki, twisting his body as he tried a diagonal slash against Loki, lending the strike extra force.

The raven familiar simply moved forward, out of Harry's radius of attack, as he span around, holding both of his blades in front of him in an X shape. He managed to step forward and catch the blade of Harry's device, before lashing out with a kick that sent Harry flying backwards.

Wincing slightly from the impact with Loki's heavy, reinforced boot, Harry decided to start adding shooting spells to their little sparring session. Bloody Daggers were out, too much risk there, but there was nothing stopping Harry calling up a Photon Lancer.

Loki cast a Panzerschild in front of himself, his forest green shield absorbing quite a bit of punishment from the hail of shooting spells aimed at it. While his vision had been obscured though, Harry had not been idly. He'd reached into that puch at his hip and withdrew handfuls of his pre-prepared little transfigurations.

Of course, Harry didn't know what each pebble was, seeing as he had a great mix of them in that pouch, but they soon transformed and attacked Loki. There were four dragons which were a little larger than horses, some pterodactyls, some common birds, and some large snakes as well.

Harry knew that Loki was physically stronger than him, faster too, so Harry used what advantages he had against the raven familiar. Overwhelming Loki with numbers was probably his best bet, and that is exactly what Harry attempted to do. He didn't just leave it at that though, no, he would give this everything he had, even if it was just a sparring session.

Harry hissed at the snakes, telling them to try and bind Loki while everything else hassled him. While this was going on, he tried to get a good shot at a binding spell in himself. He was forced to duck out of the way when Loki launched a barrage of Feather Shots blindly at the critters Harry had transfigured.

The dragons had enough resistance to magic that they got away with minimal injuries, but the other creations of Harry's weren't so lucky. The pterodactyls went down with their wings torn to shreds, and a number of the smaller birds were simply destroyed.

The snakes, because they were so low to the ground, got out unscathed, and kept trying to wrap themselves around Loki, tying him down and immobilising him. The dragons were the only major threat to Loki right then, so he focused on getting rid of them as fast as he could. Resistant to magic they might be, but these small dragons weren't large enough to have a hid thick enough to stop his blades.

Both Harry and Loki had to admit, their little sparring session was turning out to be more gory and bloody than a regular fight between Mid-Childan mages or Belkan knights usually would, but that was probably because of all of Harry's transfigured creatures.

Loki jumped in surprise as he felt sharp little teeth dig into his ankle, through his reinforced boot. He jumped out and kicked his leg out, looking at whatever it was that had just caused him so much pain. He saw a small, purple rabbit with its teeth sunk into his leg, and it didn't seem to be letting go.

Harry had to blink at the sight. Loki had taken out all of his transfigured creatures, decapitated and sliced the snakes, stabbed and torn apart the dragons, blasted the birds and pterodactyls, but the one creature he'd put in there as a joke, that delightlfully colourful bunny rabbit, was what was causing him to falter?

Harry couldn't help it, he collapsed into laughter at the sight of Loki dancing around with a bunny attached to his ankle. Tears ran from his eyes and his shoulders shook with the force of his laughter, not being able to stop, overcome with the hilarity of the sight.

Only when he could no longer hear Loki's growls, or his feet on the floor, did Harry open his tear-filled eyes. He blinked away the tears that clouded his vision, just in time to see the flat of Loki's blade come speeding towards him. A moment later, and all he saw was black, having been knocked out by Loki's device.

xxxxx

Isis huffed as she and Reinforce tended to Harry and Loki. Neither of them were particularly injured, aside from Loki's ankle, but Isis had decided that she'd give the unconscious Harry a sponge bath, getting the blood of his transfigured creautires off of him.

Reinforce had simply healed Loki's ankle up with a simple physical healing spell, before the raven familiar had gone to take a shower to get himself clean again. When he'd returned, Harry was still unconscious, and had somehow been stripped down to his boxers. Loki thought that, if Reinforce hadn't been there to moderate Isis' behaviour, he might have lost them as well.

All three in there were slightly surprised when there was a knock on the door of the head boy's suite. Reinforce instantly returned to her usual hiding place, inside of Harry's body, and Loki opened the door to let Professor Flitwick in. The tiny professor saw the unconscious Harry, with his head in Isis' lap, and chuckled.

"Ah, I thought Mr. Potter would have been up by now, I noticed last year that he was an early riser. I was going to speak to him before my usual introduction to the first years, but if right now is not a good time, I can come back later." Flitwick told Loki.

The raven familiar waved him off. "Now should be fine. Me and Harry got up earlier and had a little sparring session, which resulted in me knocking him unconscious. It shouldn't be too difficult to bring him around, an 'Ennervate' should work fine."

Harry was soon brought back to consciousness, and he grabbed his heads and groaned as he felt quite a killer headache. "That'll teach me to not get distracted in the middle of a fight." He muttered, before paying attention to where he was, and what he was wearing. "Okay, who stripped me? Stupid question really, isn't it, Isis?"

"Hoh?" Isis tried to affect an innocent look, but it turned out more lecherous than she'd probably intended. "Why do you suspect little old me? I'm a unicorn, a being of purity and innocence, there's no way that I'd ever do anything like strip you down and use a flimsy exscuse to rub my hands all over your body, is there?"

There was utter silence as everyone stared at Isis, was that frogs croaking they could hear? Loki was not surprised by it, that question was pure, unfiltered Isis. Harry was not surprised by it either, it was almost expected of her. Flitwick was somewhat taken aback himself. It was common knowledge that wizards and their familiars tended to be rather close, but it seemed that this Isis wanted to be far closer than was usually expected of a familiar.

"Erm, well, I was wanting to speak to you, Mr. Potter." Flitwick said, trying to get the conversation back on track.

"Yes, Professor?" Harry asked.

"It has come to the attention of the staff that you are rather advanced for your age, and have taken on additional subjects yourself. Both Professors Vector and Babbling have said they would accept you into their third year classes, and Madam Pomfrey has agreed to take you on for a second year of healing due to you getting some quite good results with her last year." Flitwick told Harry.

"I see." Harry replied. Septima and Beth weren't a surprise, he thought he'd heard them discussing something like this when he'd visited them a week before, but they hadn't actually said anything to him. Pomfrey wasn't much of a surprise either, he _had_ spent a fair amount of time with her in the Hospital Wing, learning all he could about healing from her. "What does this mean for me?" He asked.

"Luckily, there are slots for electives when the second years have free periods. You would have less free time compared to your peers, and a greater work load as well, but the option of taking these subjects is available to you. I have a copy of a second year's time table here, if you want to take a look at it." Flitwick handed him the appropriate bit of parchment.

Harry let his eyes flicker over it. The first and second year time tables _did_ have a lot of free space on them, spaces where higher years would have electives which younger students simply didn't have yet. Harry thought about it, what would he normally do with that free time anyway?

Given that, nine times out of ten, he would spend that time in the library, then it might be a good idea to go for the subjects. Sure, he'd be in some classes with people a year older than him, but a year wasn't exactly a huge difference. Arithmancy and Runes shouldn't be too difficult, especially seeing as he'd already been looking quite deeply into the two subjects. Healing should be fine too, he'd done it last year after all.

"Which electives would fill which free spaces?" Harry asked.

Flitwick indicated where Arithmancy and Runes would go. "Healing could go anywhere, seeing as how Madam Pomfrey doesn't have a specific class schedule. So, are you interested, Mr. Potter? It's not often that someone attends classes a year early, though it _is_ usually someone from Ravenclaw. I do believe that Professor Mcgonagall is also contemplating allowing Miss Granger a few things due to her extensive knowledge and good grades."

Harry's eyes flickered for a moment between Loki and Isis, then had his thoughts briefly bump against Reinforce inside his own mind. "I think I'd like that, Professor. Unfortunately, I do not know what the required texts might be, and therefore the Arithmancy and Ancient Runes texts I have might not be the right ones."

"You could always owl order them from Flourish and Blotts, I do believe I have a catalogue in my office." Flitwick muttered. "As for the lessons until they arrive, you may borrow some copies that we will no doubt have lying around. These are the third year texts for Arithmancy and Runes, and it might be a good idea to speak to the appropriate professors."

Harry looked at the books required for Arithmancy and Runes. Huh, he had them in his trunk from when he'd purchased them his first time in the alley. He'd have to talk to Poppy about what he might need to read for Healing, but he could do that before breakfast.

"Everything seems fine, Sir." Harry said. Flitwick nodded his head, before tapping Harry's schedule with his wand, changing it so that it now accurately reflected what lessons he was taking. Flitwick then left as Harry got ready for the day, as did Isis.

xxxxx

"Hello, Mr. Potter." Madam Pomfrey said, seeing who'd just stepped into her Hospital Wing. "Now, I don't believe you've gotten injured yet, you haven't even been in Hogwarts a full day yet. Why are you here?"

"Hello, Poppy." Harry greeted the medi-witch. "No, I'm not injured, I'm just wondering what books I'll have to read for a second year of Healing. I thought it would be a good idea to find out as early as possible. Professor Flitwick's organised my time table, so it's already set when I'll be coming to you for instruction."

"Ah, yes. I'd forgotten about that." Poppy muttered. "Well, seeing the results you got for last year, I can say that you can act as my assistant. This means that you are allowed to heal and cure basic injuries, which includes: Minor physical injuries (cuts, scrapes, bruises, fractures, etc.), reverse jinxes, curses, hexes, and provide remedies for common maladies, but large scale healing is still my responsibility." She told him. "Do you want to specialise at all?" She asked.

"What specialities are there?" Harry queried.

Pomfrey summoned a large book to herself and opened it to the contents page. "There's artefact induced injuries, those tend to require skills similar to what a curse breaker would possess. Creature induced injuries tends to deal with venom and poison frequently. Magical bugs tend to be the domain of potioneers. Potion and Plant poisoning, that's something that herbologists would be good at. Spell damage is the last one, the one that Defence Specialists would go for. So, what will it be?"

"What did you go for?" Harry asked Pomfrey.

"I'm now qualified for all of them bar artefact caused incidents, but when starting out, I specialised in magical bugs." She replied.

Harry thought about it for a minute. "I think I'd like to study Spell Damage if it's all the same to you." He stated.

Pomfrey nodded her head and summoned some parchment to herself. "So, at the end of the year, that will be a level three in Artefacts, Creature, Bugs, Potion and Plant, with a level five in Spell Damage? You did your level ones last year, and managed to actually get a level two in Poison and Plant and Creature induced injuries."

"So... books?" Harry asked, completely ignoring the way Isis was cuddling him from behind. Having spent enough time in the Hospital Wing last year, with Isis and Loki with him, they'd managed to get Pomfrey used to her perverted ways, enough to let her ignore the unicorn aside from a slight twitch of her eye at least.

"You'll need the _Healer's Manual for General Health_, _Counter-curses, Anti-Jinxes and Hex-proof Spells, _and _Diagnosing the Dead_. That last one has a weird title, I know, and the author was somwhat insane, but it _is_ a very good book. You can borrow some of the copies I have in my office until you can owl order your own." Pomfrey informed him.

Harry nodded his head. "I have a free period now, and then I have Potions, followed by Charms. This afternoon, I have Double Arithmancy and Defence Against the Dark Arts. Do you mind if I spend some time here, reading one of those books you mentioned?" He asked.

"Fine by me. I probably won't have to deal with any students until lunch time at least. Skippy!" She called out, and a house elf popped up next to her. "Can I have four breakfasts sent up please, not just the usual one." The house elf nodded its head, ears flapping all over the place, before popping out. Seeing Harry's raised eyebrow, Pomfrey rolled her eyes. "It's sod's law that the moment I try and leave the infirmary someone turns up that needs my help. Unless it's a feast, I tend to take meals in my office."

Harry flicked through the Healer's Manual for a while. While he was there, Pomfrey decided that she might as well get his yearly check-up done, and cast a few diagnostic charms at Harry. Because he was looking down at the book, he didn't notice the frown on Poppy's face, but Isis and Loki did.

"Is something the matter?" Loki asked.

"Not really the matter, no, just some odd results." Poppy muttered. "It doesn't matter, nothing bad turned up in the scans so I don't think there's anything to worry about." Seeing Harry give her a quizzical look, she rolled her eyes. "I'll have a look through some of my books, see if these readings match up to anything. They seem familiar, but there's no warning bells going off in my head, so it's either something benign or neutral."

"It's not damaging my health?" Harry asked.

Pomfrey shook her head. "Not as far as I can see and, as far as being a Healer goes, I have some damn good credentials and a heck of a lot of experience. Aside from level four and higher artefact injuries, only rare and highly uncommon healing is beyond me."

Harry's lip twitched at that, she sounded very proud of herself, which amused Harry quite a bit. "Wipe that smirk off your face, it's not arrogance if you have the experience to back it up. There's a thing or three I could tell you about your own parents and how they ended up in here when they were kids themselves."

Harry didn't persue that topic, deciding instead to just quietly read the book that he was borrowing off of Pomfrey. His lip did quirk with amusement when Loki and Isis got bored, then decided to transfigure a ping pong ball, two bats, and a net, then play a game across the table in front of him.

xxxxx

The Potions lesson after his free period wasn't so bad. Snape really seemed to have it in for Harry, but he made damn sure that he did absolutely nothing wrong, and even the permanantly sneering professor couldn't find anything to dock points for. Harry worked on his potion with Isis, but that was more an excuse so that he could see exactly where her hands were than anything else.

Charms was fairly good. It was a bit of a recap lesson, going over what they'd learned last year, but Flitwick did mention spell prefixes and suffixes. Maxima was a common one, used with a variety of spells to increase their effects many times over, but at the expenditure of a far greater amount of mana. There were also many spells it didn't work with, direct single action ones like transfiguration for example.

Double Arithmancy after lunch was one lesson that Harry was really looking forward to. As was usual, Harry, Isis, and Loki, had eaten lunch in the Ancient Runes classroom, the same as last year. Beth and Septima were both happy that Harry had decided to take their subjects a year early, and Septima did explain that her first lesson, which was after lunch, would be more of an introduction to Arithmancy than anything else. Beth also said that her first lesson with him on Thursday would be much the same, but she also said that she'd appreciate it if he helped her set up some examples of what could be done with runes beforehand.

When the end of lunch approached, Harry and Septima walked side by side to the Arithmancy classroom, where she unlocked the door and let him in. Harry took a seat in the second row, and got out pencil, paper, and the appropriate books. It wasn't long before the rest of the class found there way there, a number of them throwing confused looks at the second year amongst them.

Harry ended up with a girl named Lisa Simmons sat next to him, a Gryffindor that he vaguely knew was a friend of Katie Bell's. He only knew that because of the Weasley twins, who had told him a bit about their Quidditch team mates. Harry got the feeling that the twins liked Alicia Spinnet and Angelina Johnson, because those two were the ones they talked about the most.

"Welcome to your first ever lesson of Arithmancy." Professor Vector said, when everyone had settled down. Harry was reminded of what Septima had said to him last year, about how she acted very differently when she was being a teacher, and looking at her now, he could see how she had gotten the reputation for being somewhat strict.

"When most people think of Arithmancy, the think of spell-crafting, of the various disciplines of Divination that require knowledge of numbers. Arithmancy does include those things, yes, but there's so much more to it than that. Arithmancy is also one of the most difficult subjects that you can study at Hogwarts. Most magic is shaped by intent, and you can coast by using an instinctive grasp of spells." She let her eyes sweep the room, seeing the entirely silent class.

"That is not the case here. In Arithmancy we break down every spell, every potion, every ritual, and transform it into quantifiable variables. You will find out about the limits imposed on spells, and what happens when those limits are broken. You will find out _why_ potions need to be turned a certain number times, or left to sit for certain durations. Now, let's have a small test, shall we? Let's see who already knows something about this subject, and who will have to work harder in order to keep up." She let her eyes land on a Hufflepuff.

"Stebbins, correct? Now, can you tell me what the basic numerical foundations of spells are?" She asked.

"I'm sorry, Professor, but no." Stebbins replied.

"Understandable, seeing as I have yet to tell you. You will find the answer in your textbook, however, and I expect each and every one of you to put your full effort into this subject, in order to get as much as possible out of it. Now, Potter, same question, but let's see if you can tell me what each number represents?" Vector moved onto him.

Harry took a breath. "Three, seven, and thirteen. The number of three is a defensive number, and is often found in shields and wards. The number seven is the most common, and is found in roughly ninety percent of all spells, either as part of the structure or as a part of the base. Thirteen is most often found in curses and rituals, examples being the Patronus charm and the Unforgivable curses. The most powerful tracking spells are actually rituals that are based off of the number thirteen."

"Correct." Vector said. "Take five points. Let's take this lesson to look at those three numbers, shall we?" She waved her wand, and a pile of worksheets flew from her desk and deposited themselves in front of each student. There were three worksheets in total, one for each number.

"In front of you, there are now three activities for you to complete. There are four charts for you to complete, and each sheet has a single example already filled in at the top. The base three spell has the basic shield charm, 'Protego'. The base seven spell has the light charm, 'Lumos'. The base thirteen spell has the pressure-based blasting curse 'Bombarda'. Look at each of these examples, then look at the spells underneath each of them. I want you to spend fifteen minutes noting down all of the similarities and differences you can find between them.

Harry looked down at the worksheets and began to note down similarities and differences. Loki and Isis, who were sat on one side of him, with Loki between the unicorn and Harry, started scribbling something out on paper. Harry's eyes flickered over for a moment and almost snorted as he saw the game of naughts and crosses they were playing.

Lisa Simmons, who was sat on Harry's other side, bit her lip nervously. When she looked at the worksheet in front of her, all she saw was a bunch of lines and numbers, but a quick glance at Harry Potter's showed that he'd added a load of annotations.

Given that there was quiet discussion throughout the rest of the class and the Professor had yet to say anything, she thought there was no harm in working with someone else, especially someone who seemed to know exactly what he was doing, so she asked the boy sat next to her for help.

Harry used his pencil to lightly draw a faint circle around the numbers all attached to each other at the bottom of each example. "You see these here? This is the base of the spell. Look at the 'Lumos', see how there's only two parts to it? One part is how bright the light is, the other is actually what colour the light is. Now, look at the Jelly-legs jinx. You see how that base has seven parts? One is duration of the jinx, another is how powerful it is, a third and fourth control how much the legs move on a flat plane. A fifth variable decides how flexible the legs become, while the sixth and seventh can be used as triggers for the jinx to begin and end, meaning the curse can have a delay on it, or a specific way to end it." he started explaining, showing her how to tell what parts of the base affected what.

After fifteen minutes, Professor Vector summoned the worksheets back to herself, then quickly flicked through them. "Right, I noticed several things while I went through those just now, would anyone like to guess what? No? No one? Well, let me tell you then. Every student in this room, collectively, answered the entire thing completely. My first classroom rule is that, unless I specifically state otherwise, you are free to work together. It is much easier for people who find one aspect of a topic easier to work on that while someone with a different speciality works on something else."

She flicked her wand and the board soon had seven diagrams on it. There was a circle, two parallel lines, a triangle and so on, each following shape having one more line in it than the previous one. The lesson went on from there, Septima explaining why these shapes were important, and what numbers affected them, while the class took down notes.

After the lesson was over, Harry headed off to his first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson that he shared with the Gryffindors. He said goodbye to Lisa, who had started to talk to him more easily in the second half of the lesson, and hurried off with Isis and Loki following him.

Defense Against the Dark Arts, and publicity oriented professor, here he comes.


	8. First Defense Lesson

AN: Okay, to answer a question I was asked about James Potter. I'm being told off for saying that Snape was bad and James was a saint, well neither of them were. Was James creepy stalkerish behaviour that chased off all of Lily's potential boyfriends totally not weird and a bad thing? No, it totally was creepy and weird! What he needs to do, or needed to do, or something, is grow up. He was the popular boy at school, the one all the girls giggled over, he was rich, good at magic, a member of the Quidditch team, everything. What James needs to learn is that he can't always get his way, and that he needs to tone down some of his behaviour. Right, now on with the story!

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 8 – First Defense Lesson

When Harry, Loki, and Isis arrived at the Defense classroom, they found that most other students had already arrived. This particular lesson was shared with the Gryffindors, and Harry's eyes fell on Hermione who had three empty seats next to her.

Not really being over enthused about Lockhart and his lesson, Harry sat in between Loki and Isis, the raven familiar between himself and Hermione with the unicorn between him and the central aisle of the classroom. Isis, of course, used the opportunity to latch onto Harry's side.

Harry removed the set texts from his bag and stacked them in front of him, the smiling pictures of Lockhart on the cover facing away from himself. He then brought out the sheets of notes he'd compiled from the books, pitifully short though they were.

Of course, he wouldn't be Harry if he'd left things like that. The books that Lockhart had had them purchase dealt with seven specific magical creatures, so Harry had looked in other books and compiled everything he could find about each of them, making notes here and there where books agreed or disagreed on certain points.

Personally, Harry felt that the werewolf profile he had created was the most bland. Apart from the history of how and where the curse originated, which was still an unknown and heavily debated topic, it bore many similarities with common magical ailments with recurring symptoms.

The vampire profile, in Harry's opinion, was the best he'd made. Out of all of them, the vampires had the most complex set of customs, culture, and beliefs, which gave him a lot of things to research. He did find himself agreeing with some parts of the... well, it wasn't a religion, but a series of beliefs common amongst them that tried to explain the world at large.

The banshee profile was also rather interesting. Seeing as most dismissed banshees as sub-human creatures at best, and pests that needed exterminating at worst, they were surprisingly cultured in their own right. Harry supposed that being separate from humans, both magical and mundane, unlike wizards who were forced to mix due to muggleborns and the like, led to them developing on their own. Of course, said separation was due to the fact that their wails would be lethal to humans, but that was a minor detail.

Harry's eyes flickered up to the door, his focus on his little profiles broken, when the door opened and the rest of the class poured in. It was only a few moments later that they were all seated and getting out their textbooks. Harry's eyes and senses flickered around, looking for Lockhart.

Ah, there he was, behind the door at the opposite end of the classroom. Hmm, Harry and Reinforce focused on the door itself, as it seemed to have some sort of spell on it. It was something to do with... transparency? Oh! A one-way transparency charm, so that Lockhart could look out without anyone seeing him.

Well, it looked like the blonde wanted to make an entrance. Deciding to be a little mischievous, and mess up Lockhart's entrance, Harry muttered a spell under his breath, casting a one-use tripping charm just this side of the door. He made sure to put a cushioning charm on the floor in front of it, he didn't want to hurt the professor, just prevent him from making this a 'dazzling' performance.

Hermione looked over to Harry, her brow creasing in confusion at his quiet, muffled laughter. Whatever it was, his two familiars seemed to know what was going on, as Loki had a small grin on his face, and Isis was giggling along with Harry as well.

Her attention was turned to the front of the class when the door opened and out stepped Professor Gilderoy Lockhart. She sighed a little dreamily at the sight, missing the wide-eyed look Harry shot her way. Professor Lockhart was perfect in her opinion, a successful author, multiple heroic deeds to his name, and rather damn attractive too! If only she was older, then she might have seriously considered dating the man, not that he'd ever pay attention to a buck-toothed know-it-all like herself.

Then again, as he shot the class a brilliant smile, he just might. Her fantasizing was cut short when the professor took a step forward... and promptly smacked face first into the floor.

Hermione, horrified, jumped to her feet, as did several other girls in the class, though a few, like Fay Dunbar, merely blinked at it, shook their heads, and then went back to whatever it was they'd been doing before. A few of the guys in the classroom snickered, and Isis hugged Harry a little tighter whilst shaking slightly with laughter.

Lockhart got to his feet easily enough, assisted by several worried girls, and he brushed himself down. His hair didn't quite look so perfect any longer, but his wide smile was still easily visible. "And let that be a lesson to all of you, even the best of us can fall to a small mistake, or simple bad luck."

Huh, he managed to play it off rather easily. Well, he wouldn't be such an international celebrity if he didn't know how to cover up mistakes or make himself look good, now, would he? Harry was faintly impressed by how he managed to get the class settled back into their seats.

Instead of his formerly flashy entrance, he settled for a few – honestly, rather lame – jokes, and listing off what titles he possessed. The fact that said titles weren't actually all that impressive kind of went over most of the students' heads. An Order of Merlin was amazing, if it was first class and not third. He was also a member of the Dark Force Defense League, or at least an honourary member. As for being the winner of a beautiful smile contest five times? Wow, he must be pretty good at cosmetic charms if nothing else.

Catching the tone of his thoughts, Reinforce chided Harry for letting his cynical side out to play again, especially since he'd kept it rather supressed recently. Harry paid attention to the professor, wondering when they were going to actually get on with the lesson.

When he said that they were going to start with a quiz, Harry thought there might be hope for the lesson yet... until he read it that was. It was only Isis' grip on his side, and the fact she had him in a fairly tight hug, that prevented Harry from braining himself on the table.

Reading through the test and seeing that every question was about Lockhart, not one of them actually asking about anything Defense related, Harry gave the test up as a bad job. Instead of filling it in, he set it aside, took a crystal out of his bag and a small notebook.

In the notebook were Harry's ideas for connecting his Tome of Shadows to his Device. The issue, the largest one of them at least, was converting the data to a form that each could understand. The Tome of Shadows used a raw memory that was organised by the way Harry thought about it, while the Device used a more standard form of storage.

Reinforce's help was invaluable at times like these, as Harry was no computer programming expert. It was slow going though, as they had to essentially construct a two-way translator between a purely magical medium of storing information and a purely technological one, albiet one backed up by magic.

Runes weren't quite appropriate for the task, but it was the only way that they could think of doing it. What the initial design called for was using Arithmancy to convert everything on a page in the book into binary, then feed it into the Device which would be able to decode the binary, and then act upon the information it had been given.

Unfortunately, binary, while it was a simple language, couldn't be converted quickly enough by the Arithmancy. Instead, Harry had begun to look into more complex programming languages, and was thinking that he might try and simply duplicate what most computers used.

Reinforce was trying to convert her own programming, or at least parts of it, into Terran wizardry, but it was slow going. Harry thought that her idea was probably best, and helped as much as he could, but there was only so much he could do, so it was mainly just her work.

The thirty minutes alloted for the quiz soon passed. Loki had decided to amuse himself and see how many of the answers he could remember, so the 'quiz' that Harry handed in wasn't actually blank. Harry sighed and put the crystal and notebook away as Lockhart flicked through the tests.

"Tut, tut!" Lockhart chided the class as he looked through the questionnaires. "Hardly any of you remembered that my favourite colour is lilac, I say it is so quite clearly in _Year with a Yeti_. A few of you should read _Wanderings with Werewolves_ a little more carefully as well, you'll find that I mention my ideal birthday gift quite clearly in chapter twelve. For those of you that missed it, that would be peace between all magic and non-magic peoples, though I wouldn't say no to a large bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky of course!"

Lockhart gave the class a rougish wink, one that had the most females 'squee-ing', while most of the boys looked faintly ill at it all. Harry's own eyes were narrowed, more because Lockhart's eyes had lingered on Isis than any other reason, and Isis was a little surprised when Harry returned her hug, a little tighter than she thought he ever would have hugged her.

She wasn't complaining though, she rather enjoyed her master's attention being lavished on her. If the cause of it was jealousy induced by Lockhart, then that was fine by her. In return, she snuggled a little closer to harry herself, pretty much moulding herself to his side. Neither her nor Harry paid much attention as Lockhart praised Hermione for her perfect score and awarded points.

They both, however, paid attention when Lockhart's entire demeanour changed. Harry marveled slightly at the ease with which he shifted from a bright, cheery, smiling man, to a more serious, dramatic sort. The rattling cage that he lifted also drew their attention.

From what Harry and his familiars could feel, there were a number of small, but surprisingly strong, 'clumps' of magic in the cage. At a guess, Harry would say that there was a group of small magical creatures in the cage, Doxies or something perhaps.

"Now, be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room!" Harry wondered if Lockhart was going to bring a boggart to lesson. "Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm."

With that, he whipped the cover off the cage, and Harry slumped in disappointment. Cornish Pixies weren't exactly his idea of something incredibly dangerous. Granted, their pranks could be a nuisance, but they never caused injuries worse than a few scrapes or bruises.

Someone near the front, Harry wasn't looking that way so never saw who exactly it was, let out a loud snort of laughter that not even Lockhart could mistake as a scream of terror.

"Yes?" He smiled at Seamus Finnegan, showing Harry who it was that had laughed.

"Well they're not very _dangerous,_ are they?" He asked, chuckling.

Suddenly, Harry had a very bad feeling. He looked down at his hands, making sure that he had his Device on him, even if it was in standby mode. "Panzerhindernis." He muttered, summoning up a weak dome-shaped barrier around himself, Isis, and Loki.

He'd kept it low powered for two reasons. One, the more powerful it was, the more visible it was, and he didn't want people to see it. Right now, it was barely a slight discoloured distortion in the air. Two, Cornish Pixies weren't really a major threat, so something weak like this should be able to keep them out without difficulty.

Harry's concerns were proven to be accurate, as Lockhart, without taking any measures to seal the classroom, opened the cage and released all of the Pixies into the room. Aside from Harry, Loki, and Isis, who remained calm inside of Harry's barrier, the classroom was reduced to chaos.

Only three students seemed to have any inkling of what to do in this situation. Hermione began to freeze the pixies in mid-air, then hurriedly stuffed them back into their cage. Su Li was knocking them out of th air, and boy was that girl nimble and flexible. Terry Boot seemed to be really damn accurate, knocking pixies out of the air with a few well-placed hexes.

Lockhart had simply asked them 'What was the problem? They're only pixies!', then he had cast something, or at least attempted to cast something. Whatever 'Peskipiksi Pesternomi' was supposed to do, it failed. Lockhart had then left them to deal with the pixies themselves, fleeing into what Harry guessed to be his own rooms. Oh, he also had his wand stolen and thrown out of the window by a pixie while he was at it.

"Harry! Help!" Hermione called at him. She had noticed how pixies seemed to be bouncing off of some sort of shield he had in place around himself, and she was very curious as to what spell it was, but she'd ask him that later, right then they needed every person who could cast a spell to stop these pixies.

Harry, Loki, and Isis looked at each other, shrugged, then called up a shooting spell each. """Photon Lancer/ Feather Shot, Shoot Barret.""" Each of them intoned, Loki using his own spell, Harry relying on Fate's, and Isis using the most basic of basic Mid-Childan shooting spells. """Shoot.""" The spoke together.

Balls of energy flew all around the room, hunting down the pixies and knocking them out. Once that was over with, all they had to do was collect them up and drop them back into the cage. Seeing how there was still twenty minutes left of the lesson, and Lockhart had buggered off, Harry decided to bite the bullet so to speak.

He stood at the front of the class, and Loki surreptitiously cast a locking charm on Lockhart's door. He saw that, surprisingly, he had the full class's attention on him. He let his eyes flicker over all of them, idly noting that there seemed to be a divide right down the middle of the room, Ravenclaw on one side, Gryffindor on the other.

"Right," Harry said. "Seeing how our professor has decided to... vacate the room, and we have twenty minutes left of a lesson, I'm going to try and teach you something. I hope none of you mind, but anything is better than nothing, right?"

Hermione raised her hand in the air.

"Yes?" Harry said.

"What spells were those that you just used?" She asked. "I know you used a shield spell of some sort to keep the pixies off you, and then there were those odd balls of light. What are they called and where did you learn them?" She asked.

Harry sighed. "As you heard when we cast them, the shooting spells are called Photon Lancer, Shoot Barret, and Feather Shot. The last one is something that Loki created himself. As for the shield I used, it is called Panzerhindernis, which is actually German for Armour Barrier."

He turned around, found some chalk for the blackboard and hurriedly, with Reinforcing whispering the right things into his mind, wrote out the spell formula for the barrier spell. "Now, a lot of what I'm talking about is based in Arithmancy, which I've read up on a lot, so I'm not expecting anyone to just be able to copy this." He told them, before copying out a much simpler formula, the one for Shoot Barrret.

"This is a basic shooting spell, and I think that we might be able to learn this relatively quickly." With that, Harry began to try and teach a class of Terran wizards and witches a Mid-Childan spell. He thought he did things rather well, even if only two people managed to get it by the end of the lesson, even if they only got one orb in the air. After all, they only had twenty minutes to practise it, so that was a damn good achievement.

_~Seriously, Rein, would you take this class if we could get rid of Lockhart?~_ Harry asked as they left the room after the lesson was over, leaving Lockhart locked in his own office. Harry wondered how long it would take the man to get out, the locking charm Loki had cast was rather weak, and would wear off in the next ten minutes or so.

_~I think you're just looking for an excuse for me to walk around in my own form.~_ Reinforce mentally chuckled. _~That's sweet of you, but I don't think I'm cut out to be a teacher. Anyway, where are you going now? That was the last lesson of the day, so your time is your own now.~_

Harry shrugged his shoulders and headed off to the Head Boy suite he was staying in. After a sweep for anything that might be recording the goings on in there, Reinforce made her appearance and they all sat down on the beds in the bedroom. Harry got right on with the homework he'd gotten that day, getting it out of the way as soon as possible, while Isis, Loki, and Reinforce did their own thing.

xxxxx

It was the next morning when Harry encountered... someone a little strange. He had been heading down to breakfast, Loki and Isis at his sides like usual, when he had rounded a corner, saw a first year Gryffindor, and was then nearly blinded by the flash from his camera.

Blinking spots out of his eyes, Harry made a mental note to watch out for things like that in future, a sudden bright flash, from something as simple as a camera, had rendered him, Loki, and Isis vulnerable for a few seconds. Feeling vulnerable was not something that Harry liked, and he knew it could easily be fatal in the future.

Since he was planning to join the TSAB when he was older, though being a child wasn't an obstacle to joining that group, Harry wanted to prove himself, to apply himself, to be the best he could be. Knowing that combat was inevitable, he'd just learned a valuable lesson about how something as 'innocent' as a flash of light could be used in a less than friendly manner.

Anyway, once Harry's sight was cleared, he could see the Gryffindor boy bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, a wide grin on his face and a mad sparkle in his eyes. Then his mouth opened and Harry had trouble keeping up with him due to how fast the boy was talking.

He held up a hand for silence, and the boy instantly shut up. "Okay, slow down. Now, I haven't a clue who you are, nor why you're here, and I don't know what you want from me. Hello, small, Gryffindor boy, I am Harry Potter. Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?" It can be noted that, on occasion, Harry could be rather sarcastic and irritable.

"Hey, Harry, I'm Colin Creevey!" The boy said excitedly. "When I get the picture developed, do you think you could sign it? You see, my dad's a milkman, and neither he or my mum can really believe everything that's going on, so I'm taking pictures of everything to show them!"

Creevey then caught sight of Isis' tail and his eyes widened immensely. He went to reach out and touch it, but Isis took a step back. "You know, in the Wizarding World, it's considered extremely rude to touch another's familiar without permission, and I am my Master Harry's familiar."

Isis draped herself across Harry's shoulders, giving Creevey the evil eye. Only Harry was allowed to touch her, especially there of all places! Not that Harry really did anything like that, but she would tempt and entice him until he finally did it, she'd make sure of that!

Harry just huffed a sigh at Isis' actions and rolled his eyes. "I'm not signing any pictures, and I would appreciate it if you would ask permission in the future." He then gave the obviously muggle camera in Colin's hands a look. "Do you know that there's a potion that causes images soaked in it to become capable of moving?" He asked.

"Really!?" Colin squeaked.

"Yes," Harry said. "They can even be spelled to not move if a muggle looks at them. Hmm, but you're a muggleborn yourself, so... I think there might be a way to add your parents as exceptions to that rule, providing you can get a few drops of blood from each of them before brewing the potion." Harry mused, more to himself than Colin now.

"What potion is it?" He asked Harry.

"What? Oh, the potion? It's in _Potions for Pictures_ in the library. The modification necessary is simple blood magic, just add three drops of blood before the final step and stir seven times counter-clockwise." Harry told the boy. That blood thing was common with almost all potions, the last ingredient was always the one that made the potion 'complete', so adding anything after that would only mess it up.

Of course, considering the fact that the book Harry learned this from he had found in an out of the way corner in the Restricted Section... well, he wasn't going to admit to that anytime soon. He wondered what interesting little titbits he'd find there this year, as the majority of the library, or even just the Restricted Section, had yet to be read by him.

Harry watched Colin charge off at full speed with a slightly amused smile on his face. Really, that kid was going to cause an accident running about the place like that. Anyway, continuing on, Harry headed on down to breakfast, Loki at his side and Isis still draped all over him.

When they'd sat down at the Ravenclaw table, Isis tried to feed Harry by hand, but he just gave her a flat look. She pouted, making Harry roll his eyes. "Alright, but only a little bit. I am perfectly capable of feeding myself, you know, and I don't need assistance with it."

Isis did a little seated happy dance, before feeding Harry some toast, and giving him a drink as well. Loki just shook his head and laughed at them, his eyes twinkling slightly with amusement. Of course, there were others that saw what was going on, and their reactions were split between chuckling, rolling eyes, jealousy, and contempt.

"What lessons do you have today?" Loki asked at one point, eating a bowl of cereal.

"Herbology is first, and it's a double. Second is Runes. After that is lunch, and this afternoon I have Transfiguration, another double, then there's Astronomy at midnight." Harry shook his head, what sort of school had classes at midnight!? If his class last year was anything to go by, no one would be awake for the damn lesson.

"Well, if you're done being hand fed, shall we be off to the greenhouses?" Loki asked, smirking slightly as Isis pouted, having another slice of toast ready in her hand. Harry, catching sight of it, sighed, accepted the slice of toast, and then got ready to head out onto the grounds.

xxxxx

"That is one weird tree." Loki muttered, looking at the Whomping Willow.

Harry scrunched his brow at the sight of it. "Yeah, it is. The Whomping Willow is a tree that straddles the line between flora and fauna, like several other plants and animals. Those trees have been known to actually move if they don't receive sufficient nutrients, albeit slowly, because they are, after all, trees."

"It's a cool-looking plant though." Isis added her opinion to the mix. "How many people can say that they have a tree at their school capable of boxing?"

Harry snorted for a moment, imagining boxing gloves on the Whomping Willow's branches, before stopping and frowning for a moment. "It's a curiosity, you're right, but I wonder why it's here? The tree, though healthy, only looks a couple of decades old at most, and they are supposed to be _very_ expensive, as well as difficult to get hold of."

"You can look it up later, book lover, but you have Herbology now." Isis said.

"Book lover?" Harry raised an eyebrow at Isis.

"Well," A lewd grin appeared on Isis' face. "I'm sure that Rein could do with some love- Oof! Hey!" She was cut off by Loki whacking her over the back of the head, making her call him a meanie and request Harry to kiss it better, which he did, much to Loki's amusement.

When they arrived at the lesson, which they shared with the Slytherins, they found that they would be learning about mandrakes. Harry thought that a bit odd, especially considering how expensive mandrakes were, and the fact that there were only a few potions that used mandrakes in them, primarily restoratives and a few rather dark potions as well, such as one that would force a female to become pregnant with someone's child if they added some blood or hair to it.

_~Harry, focus on the lesson.~_ Reinforce admonished him, making him do just that, but not before sending Reinforce a mental image of himself sighing and a message of _~If I must.~_ back to her. She mentally clicked her tongue at him, and made sure he was paying attention to the lesson. Let it not be said that Harry would disobey Reinforce, because he most definitely wouldn't.

The re-potting of the mandrakes went rather smoothly. Harry, Loki, and Isis, all worked together, and they all wore pink and fluffy earmuffs at Isis insistence, while they wrestled the young mandrakes into the pot. Harry had a good method of getting them in, he just struck them on the head to make them dizzy for a moment and then stuffed them into their pots before piling dragon dung compost on top of the little buggers.

Once that lesson was over, Harry and his familiars headed inside, before going off to Runes. This was another class that Harry was having with third years, like Arithmancy, and it seemed word had spread about that as no one gave him a second glance when he walked into the room.

Like with Septima, Beth was a lot more strict in class than he'd seen her before, but he did catch her winking and grinning at him whenever the rest of the class weren't looking, and they started to make a little game of it. Due to looking into runes for a year, Harry was ahead of the class, so he began trying to draw runes on things from a distance, and seeing if Beth could notice and counteract them without the class being any the wiser.

Harry pouted a little at the end of the lesson when Beth got the last rune that he'd managed to draw with his wand, a small one on the window that would have caused it to fall open, nothing special, and the two of them waited in the classroom for Septima to turn up for lunch.

Over food, they discussed Lockhart, and whether he would make a good teacher or not. While Beth and Septima both mentioned that he was rather attractive, in a somewhat foppish kind of way, he wasn't a fantasy of either of them. Septima did recall Lockhart being a Ravenclaw student when he was at Hogwarts, but that was pretty much all she could tell him, having been in a different year to Lockhart.

After Lunch, Harry had double Transfiguration. In this lesson, they mainly did review work, going over everything they'd learned the previous year, and proving that they hadn't forgotten it. Harry did get some points with his rather wide variety of transfigured creatures. He might not be a natural at Transfiguration, but he put so much effort into it that it was his highest scoring subject.

Seeing as Harry's next lesson was in the middle of the night, he settled down to have a little nap. He felt when something laid down next to him, and knew that he'd awake wrapped in Isis' arms. What surprised him was the small spike of emotion he felt from Reinforce at that, and then found that there was a weight on the bed on his other side.

Deciding to leave discovering the subtleties of the female mind for later, Harry simply tried to get some shut eye, and soon drifted off to a light sleep, being used as a teddy-bear by both Isis and Reinforce. He awoke in plenty of time for Astronomy of course, and due to Reinforce's influence, he ended up with a far more detailed star chart than he really should have.

Once that lesson was over, and seeing that he had a chance to get some sleep before dawn, Harry headed back to his rooms. When he got to the bedroom, he idly wondered if Isis' bed was going to be slept in at all this year, as she seemed perfectly happy sharing his.

Not that he minded, as he kind of liked sleeping between her and Reinforce, but if that was the case then maybe they could move her bed out of there, it would make things less squashed after all.


	9. Hearing Voices

AN: Ah, okay, it looks like I didn't explain something very well last chapter. When I mentioned binary as a computer language, I didn't quite mean it literally. What I meant was using it as a medium to convert the analogue data in the tome (raw memories) into digital data that the Device could understand. I'm not going to even guess at programming languages for devices in the Nanoha-verse, as they probably use something not found on earth, so I'm not going to even try and explain that. Also, I think I'll mention that someone has added a 'Reinforced Magic Omakes' topic to my forum. All that's in there right now is Isis being a pervert, but hey, it's a start.

My forum link is on my profile or you can use this: forum/Lupine-Horror-Behind-the-scenes-of-my-stories/139203/1/0/

Oh, I'm also keeping track of how far along my chapters are on my profile, so if you want to know how much of the next chapter's written, just take a peak at that.

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 9 – Hearing Voices

A few days later, Harry was sat in what had been dubbed the 'Study Room'. It was the room that had last year been used by pretty much all of Harry's year mates who congregated together to do homework and study for classes. It seemed like that would be continuing into this year as well, and it was where Harry was right now.

He was in the corner, sheets of paper spread out in front of him, covered in various little equations and rune combinations. In his hand, he held one of the crystals that he was hoping to use to connect his Tome of Shadows to his Device. He was glaring at it right then, as it was being very uncooperative with him, and he was a bit stuck on where to go from where he was.

Isis was behind Harry, having put several chairs next to each other to make a rudimentary bench and then put a cushioning charm on it, lying out and dozing lightly. Loki was off doing something, he didn't say what and Harry didn't ask, so that left Harry sharing head space with Reinforce, the two of them trying to puzzle out how to solve Harry's current project.

Across from Harry, two chairs were pulled out, and two people sat down in them. Harry raised his eyes to see who it was and then blinked curiously. He glanced around the room and saw that it was, for a change, empty, aside from him, Isis, and now the two opposite him as well.

"Hello, Daphne, Blaise. Is there something I can help you with?" Seeing as Harry was fairly frequently asked for assistance by the other students, it was a rather reasonable question, but, for some reason, Harry doubted that the coming conversation was going to be about Transfiguration troubles, or help with charms.

Behind Harry, Isis sat up in her seat, and stood behind Harry. Her eyes flickered between the two Slytherins, but her slightly narrowed eyes did linger slightly longer on the girl rather than the boy. She placed her hands on Harry's shoulders and leaned forward over him, letting her arms slip down so her forearms were on Harry's shoulders instead.

"We just have a few questions that we were hoping you could answer." Daphne said. Harry just nodded his head and gestured 'go on' with his hand. "We were... rather curious about certain aspects of magic that you have displayed. Simply put, we have heard about a spell you taught in Lockhart's first lesson."

Blaise continued on from there. "It's just that neither of us have ever heard of anything like this before, and there's a few other things we've noticed too. For one, we both remember the flying lesson last year. When those strange glyphs appeared to catch Longbottom, your hair suddenly turned silver."

Daphne then spoke up. Harry recognised what they were doing, speaking in turns, forcing him to split his attention two ways, trying to put him off balance so he'd let something slip. "Since we weren't in your Defence lesson, we asked someone else to demonstrate the spell for us."

Back to Blaise again. "She was doing homework at the time and had a quill in her hand. Since she was just demonstrating, and not actually trying to cast the spell, she didn't switch to her wand. Imagine our surprise when the spell worked just fine, despite her lack of wand."

Daphne spoke once more. "So she put the quill down and tried the spell again. It worked. Of course, as I'm sure you know, wandless magic is... a rarity, and usually only the most powerful are capable of it. So, we decided to see if others in your class could cast the spell wandlessly as well."

Blaise leaned forwards, putting his forearms onto the desk. "They managed it, just as easily as when they were using a wand." He paused for a moment. "There have been other occasions when... unusual spells have been seen, and certain indications that lead back to you."

Daphne's eyes flickered up to Isis, before returning to Harry. "There have also been certain other things that have caught peoples' eyes, things like your two unique familiars, Loki the raven and Isis the unicorn. Familiars are not supposed to gain a human-like form, yet yours have."

Harry cocked his head to one side. "What is all of this leading towards?" Harry asked carefully, even though he was pretty sure he knew what they wanted.

"We would like it if you were to teach us this unusual magic. We would be most grateful if you were to do so, and we would both owe you a... favour for it." Blaise said. Harry kept silent for a moment, thinking things over. These two were showing qualities that Slytherins were supposed to be known for, and Harry found himself quite intrigued.

They'd let him know of a few things they'd noticed, but also mentioned that they knew more, and Harry didn't know how much more. They weren't demanding he teach them, making nuisances of themselves, and the way they were talking, teaching them sounded rather reasonable.

There were issues though. Shoot Barret, the spell he'd taught in Defence class, was the most basic Mid-Childan spell there was, and the cheapest in terms of mana. Unlike himself, most witches and wizards didn't have the capacity to cast the middle and higher tier spells in the Mid-Childan and Ancient Belkan systems.

Perhaps a compromise then. He'd already established, with Septima and Beth, that Arithmancy can be used to explain away his Mid-Childan and Ancient Belkan spells. The only issue was the lack of history for such spells, which is what had tipped Septima off that there was more to his spells than met the eye.

"Tell me, what do the two of you know about Occlumency?" Harry asked, making the two Slytherins blink at the seemingly random question.

It was Blaise that answered. "Occlumency is the opposite of Legilimency. It is a 'Mind Art' centred on the organisation of ones own thoughts and the defence from external influences. It is a required skill in occupations such as Law and Healing, as well as any other job that requires client confidentiality or the defence of a secret."

Daphne added a little to the end of that. "The basics of it is also taught to children of pureblood houses to protect family secrets, and it can also be used to control emotions and body language."

Harry nodded his head. "That was almost a textbook definition, but it's not entirely accurate. Yes, Occlumency can be used to defend the mind from external influences, compulsions, Legilimency, potions, and so on. Yes, Occlumency can also be used to improve your ability to retain information, but it's not that simple."

Harry leaned back in his seat, and Isis sat down behind him, keeping her arms on his shoulders. She hadn't spoken up yet, but she was no longer glaring at either Daphne or Blaise any longer. "Occlumency 'improves' your mind, but there are myriad ways this can be done. The type of Occlumency that lawyers learn is centred around defending themselves, keeping their minds from being read. The type of Occlumency a scholar or researcher would likely learn is centred around organising their mind, improving recall. The type of Occlumency I am using, and improving on as well is different."

"How so?" Blaise asked curiously. He had never really thought about different types of Occlumency before, but what Harry said made sense. Organising your mind would improve recall, but it would also make it easier for a Legilimens to find what they were looking for, Defending your mind would not necessarily make it easier to remember things, but what did Harry do that was different?

"My Occlumency is based on the concept of accelerating the rate at which my thoughts and calculations are done. Yes, I also have barriers around my mind to keep people out, but they are relatively weak. They are strong enough to keep someone out for a short while, but my thoughts go by so fast that they're difficult to get a grip on, and if I eject someone from my mind, they'd have to start all over again." Harry told them. "My Occlumency allows me to rapidly calculate the Arithmancy necessary for spells, and that is the subject 'my' magic is based in."

Daphne nodded her head, as if she understood what Harry was saying. "Since you can calculate the exact nature of the spells you are using, especially if they have already been created and you are simply recalling them, you can alter variables in real time, allowing you to control them as they are happening." She mused, before looking Harry right in the eye. "That's also the reason you can control a dozen of them at once, while everyone else has only been able to manage one."

Harry gave her a small smile, and a light chuckle as well. "That's part of it. The other part of my Occlumency is focused on thinking consciously on multiple things. We only have one conscious mind though, so my mind rapidly cycles between several different things per second, making it seem like I'm doing multiple things simultaneously." What Harry had just described, how his Occlumency worked, was essentially the basics of how a computer dealt with multiple applications being open at once.

"So you're saying that it would be... difficult for us to learn these spells of yours unless we thought like you do?" Blaise asked. It would make sense, but, for some reason, he felt there was more to it than that, something that Harry wasn't telling them.

"No, that's not quite true. Without the same or similar Occlumency to mine, it is possible to use the spells I do, but it would be more difficult, especially the higher tier spells, and you wouldn't be able to cast as many simultaneously like I can. The other requirement is power. As you've probably heard, I have a _lot_ of power available to me, so I can make use of the mana intensive spells that others couldn't." Harry said.

"So we couldn't use the more powerful spells you can because we don't have the mana?" Daphne asked. She shook her head when Harry opened his mouth to speak, interrupting him before he could speak. "We are not offended, we _know_ how much power you have available to you, much more than anyone else known."

Blaise then spoke up again. "Still, just because we can't use the more powerful spells doesn't mean we can't learn _something_ from you. Just the ability to use spells without a wand, even just one or two, would be an ability that many would pay a very large price for."

Harry huffed to himself. "Fine, I guess I could teach you a half dozen or more spells if you really want me to." He shook his head. "First thing's first though, see if you can get your Occlumency to include a little of what mine does. The ability to rapidly calculate the equations necessary is a _very_ helpful skill."

Blaise and Daphne thanked him, before rising from their seats and leaving the room. Harry closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. He shuddered slightly as Isis began massaging his shoulders, looked back at her and smiled. She returned his look with a raised eyebrow and a question.

"Do you really think it's a good idea to teach them two Mid-Childan or Belkan magic like that? Also, just what spells are you going to teach them? You know as well as I do that Terran Wizards don't have the mana capacity for anything half-way decent in those two magic systems." Isis asked him.

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "They'll only be able to manage the weakest spells in the Mid-Childan system, so there's not much I can really teach them. Protection, and maybe Defenser, for shields. Shoot Barret and Divine Shooter, the simplest shooting spells, are all I'd be able to teach them in that category. Honestly, the only way they'd be able to get anything much higher than that is with mana collection type spells, and they'd need to either have a Device help them with that, or drastically improve the rate at which they can calculate the necessary variables. Also, I'm not particularly sure about teaching them mana collection, as it is a very dangerous skill."

"If you say so, Harry." Isis said. "Whatever you decide, know that I'm right her with you, and I will follow you wherever you go, even into the pits of hell itself." Harry smiled thankfully at her. He was glad that she didn't resent him for making her into his familiar, turning her from being purely unicorn into what she was now.

Reinforce had told Harry stories of familiars turning on their masters for various reasons, even if it was rather rare. Loyalty wasn't something built into them, but it was often the case that they were loyal to their masters, and Harry wouldn't have forced someone to be something they weren't, act in a way counter to their personality.

"Thank you, Isis." Harry muttered quietly, but still loud enough for her to here, as he turned around and gave the unicorn familiar a hug. Isis, in turn, nearly crushed Harry in the tight hug she returned, smiling widely down at her cute little master.

xxxxx

"Mr. Potter, please wait behind."

Harry looked up at the professor, his brow creased in confusion. It was the last lesson of the day, which happened to be Transfiguration, and they'd moved on from review work to what was actually on the second year syllabus, including animate to inanimate transfiguration and basic switching spells.

He remained in his seat, as did Loki and Isis who were sat either side of him, as everyone else streamed out of the classroom. Mcgonagall looked at Harry sternly for a moment, before getting to her feet and walking towards him. "Do you remember something I said last year?" She asked.

Harry frowned slightly, casting his mind back. Seeing Mcgonagall glance at the familiars either side of him gave him an inkling of what she was referring to though, and that made him remember. "You said that you'd be willing to supervise me becoming an Animagus, right?"

"That's right, Mr. Potter, I did." Mcgonagall replied. "You will, I assume, be curious as to why I'm allowing someone so young attempt such a difficult branch of magic. Well, let me try and answer that. Primarily, the area of Transfiguration you have shown most competency in is animate transformations, which is usually what students find most difficult, and it is the area of transfiguration that the Animagus transformation most relies on. Another reason I'm willing to let you do this is your attitude. You are a very studious pupil, and will not abuse these extra lessons I am going to give you."

Her eyes then flickered between Isis and Loki again, before returning to Harry. "Your familiars also intrigue me, and I have a slight theory that you, because they possess the ability to switch their form, you will also find this relatively easy, the ability 'leaking' over to you through your familiar bond. Now, shall we get started with your first lesson?"

Harry nodded his head. "Yes please."

"Very well then, first lesson." Mcgonagall sat down. "The first thing to know about Animagi is the power requirement for a form. The larger or the more magical the form is, the more powerful the witch or wizard with that form will need to be to achieve it. My form is a cat, but I am magically powerful enough to have managed a large horse if that was my form. Of course, the opposite can also happen. It is possible to have the form of a horse, but only be magically powerful enough to manage something the size of a cat."

Harry raised a hand. "What did you mean by 'magically powerful'? Is it possible to get a magical animal as your form?"

Mcgonagall nodded her head. "Yes, it is. Often, the magical animals of people who become Animagi are things like kneazles, porlocks, salamanders, occamies, and things like that usually. There _have_ been cases of gryphons, thestrals, and pegasi Animagi, but they tend to be rather rare. This may apply to you due to your truly vast magical reserves, allowing you to manage a larger form than others would be capable of."

"I see." Harry muttered to himself. "How much are people affected by their Animagus forms?" He asked.

"That depends on their form." Mcgonagall replied. "My cat form grants me incredible balance, as well as improved night vision. Those with a bird form often find that their eyesight is dramatically improved, and those who have nocturnal animals for their form find that their sleeping patterns might change, in addition to having improved night vision. These changes tend to be more exaggerated with magical Animagi, depending on which form they have. They may find their lifespan extended, they may develop certain magical skills like mage sight, and more. There's a theory that Salazar Slytherin became a Parselmouth because he gained an Animagus form that was a magical serpent, and there is a legend that a Peverell, who had the Animagus form of a thestral, gained a limited form of invisibility. Neither of those 'facts' have ever been confirmed, but it is a definite possibility."

"That does seem rather interesting. Do you mind me asking why Animagi are so rare then? With advantages like those, I don't see why more people don't learn to be Animagi. The registry, after all, only has a handful of people on it." Harry stated.

"Several reasons actually." Mcgonagall told him. "For one, the thought of turning into a 'lesser being' is repugnant to... certain people, so they don't learn it. For others, they don't have the necessary skill, it's only because you are good at _animate_ transformations in particular that I'm even considering you for this. The process of becoming an Animagus also requires a lot of force of will, you have got to have a large desire to change to actually manage it the first time, though successive transformations are far easier than that. Another reason people don't learn it is because they don't want to face themselves. An Animagus transformation turns you into an animal representative of yourself, and many people don't want to face up to the truth of themselves. Imagine finding out your form is a slug or a leech, what would that say about your personality that you are most like those animals?"

"So what do you want me to do first?" Harry asked.

"You need to be brutally honest with yourself." Mcgonagall dead-panned. "You need to truly understand what sort of person you are to become an Animagus, not delude yourself and face facts. It's the most difficult aspect of the Animagus transformation, and the point where most fail. Are you a loyal person? Are you vengeful? Are you quiet? Are you self-centred? Are you vicious? Are you a perfectionist? Are you envious? Are you nocturnal or diurnal? These are the sorts of questions you need to ask yourself, and you have to be truly honest with yourself as well. Asking other people to describe you doesn't tend to work, as you tend to hold a measure of disbelief to what they say, but it still might help."

_~ Reinforce, do you think you could be completely honest about me? If I were asked who knew me best, then I could not answer honestly unless I gave them your name. I trust you, and I don't want you to sugar-coat anything for me, so could you do that for me, please?~_ Harry spoke internally, asking Reinforce if she could identify exactly what sort of person Harry was.

_~I can try, Harry. This sounds more like something you have to discover yourself, but if you ask me to do so, then I will do just that. Do you think that dosing yourself with a truth potion and being asked about yourself might help?~_ Reinforce replied.

Blinking, Harry directed that question to Mcgonagall, as well as asking whether there was a spell or potion that could tell you more about yourself. Mcgonagall frowned for a moment before she replied. "I must say, I've never thought about doing something like that, but it might help. I'm sure that you don't want to spill whatever secrets you might have to me, but perhaps your familiars might be able to assist you with that?"

Mcgonagall paused before continuing. "It sounds like a good idea, but remember that you're placing your complete trust in somebody else. Most people are highly averse to being dosed with truth potion, and it's actually illegal to do so outside of a trial or without specific permission from who you're dosing. As for a spell or potion that would tell you more about yourself, I can only say that I don't know about one myself."

They continued to talk about the Animagus transformation for over half an hour. Mcgonagall told him that the skeletal, musculature, and other changes his body would undergo during his first transformation would be very painful, but later ones would not be. She also told him that, once he found what his animal was, he needed to understand what his form meant to actually transform.

It _was_ possible to transform as soon as you knew what your form was, but it was so difficult to do so that it might as well be impossible. The more you knew about your other form, their biology, their mentality, their habitat, their diet, the properties of their bodies, even what they could be used for in potions could help. The more you knew, the easier the transformation was. Once they knew what Harry's form was, Mcgonagall could transfigure Harry into it, so that he could get used to how the body moved, what the balance was like, and things like that, but that was probably quite a way off yet.

As Harry left the classroom, flanked by Isis and Loki, Mcgonagall couldn't help but give Harry a proud look that he couldn't see. Harry was even better at Transfiguration than James had been! Yes, James had the natural talent for the subject, and his parents had hired tutors for him, but Harry's own hard work, which was greater than the most zealous Hufflepuff, was what really made Harry special, what made him succeed.

"Oh, James, Lily, if you could only look at your son now. Honestly, I think he'll outstrip both of you in academics, and he's even made friends with his entire year! Ah, James, what would you say, your boy friends with Slytherins. Why, I'm sure you're rolling in your grave." She chuckled lightly to herself, before preparing to do some marking that needed her attention.

xxxxx

It was late in September, and everything at Hogwarts was going rather smoothly. Lockhart was still an attention-seeking _celebrity_, and he always had this smile on his face that irritated Harry and made him want to punch him in the face. He wondered if Lockhart's smile would still be as bright if he had half of his teeth missing.

Harry was also beginning to become something of a mentor to the first years as well. When a few of them had turned up to the 'Study Room' that the second years used, he had ended up helping them with their homework. After that, he pretty much became the go to guy whenever the first or second years were stuck on anything.

This had the side effect of the four houses mixing even more. You could see it with Harry's year group, a few exceptions aside of course. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle all refused to show up anywhere near the Study Room that had been set up but the rest of Slytherin did, and the way they interacted with all of the other houses was quite nice to see, especially in comparison to how the upper years interacted with each other.

There were two first years that Harry was a little... wary of. Ginny Weasley and Colin Creevey were a little unusual, and slightly creepy, to Harry. The former, Ginny, Ron's little sister, blushed whenever she saw him and often caused a little accident of some sort.

It was so bad that Harry made sure that he didn't sit in her field of vision during meals, as there were times that his eyes had flickered over her and she'd knocked something to the floor or in someone's lap or something. There were also times in corridors where she'd tripped over herself and Harry had caught her, making her into an even worse blushing and stuttering mess.

Fred and George Weasley had provided the explanation for her behaviour. It seemed that Ginny was absolutely enthralled by the Harry Potter books, the ones where Harry was battling dragons, rescuing princesses, that sort of thing, magical versions of fairy tales.

Molly Weasley hadn't helped either, apparently, as she fully supported her daughters romantic dreams. She seemed to believe that her daughter had a very good chance of snagging Harry as her husband, and had been known to come up with Wedding plans and things around the two of them.

In Fred's words, Molly Weasley was rather obsessed with the idea of the 'big, happy Weasley family'. George had added that it was their mother's overbearing nature that had been a large part of their eldest brothers, Bill and Charlie, deciding to move out of the country.

Colin Creevey, on the other hand, was a muggleborn who was new to the Wizarding World... and had kind of put Harry up on a pedestal because he was a 'hero'. Honestly, his fascination with Harry was actually rather understandable. After all, how many people went to school with an internationally known celebrity? Add to that his childish naivety, recent introduction to the Wizarding World, and the fact he always seemed to be on a sugar rush, and his... eccentricities seemed not _too_ bad.

Anyway, all of that aside, Harry was kept fairly busy by everything he was doing. His lessons were going well, the stuff he was learning with Madam Pomfrey was interesting as well as useful, the extra Animagus lessons with Mcgonagall, which were more like discussions really, were intriguing and something Harry looked forward to. Also, three evenings a week, Harry, Loki, and Isis went off planet to Cryas, as they'd all signed up for combat classes there. They were learning how to fight individually as well as in a team, both with those they were familiar with and those they weren't, and it was rather enjoyable.

Harry was just on his way back from the Library when he stopped in his tracks, Isis walking into the back of him, Loki catching them both and preventing them falling over. The two familiars looked at Harry with curiosity and worry, but Harry's attention was not focused on them at all.

Harry had heard a voice. "_Come... come to me... let me rip you... let me tear you... let me kill you..._" It had said. What had grabbed Harry's attention most though was not the words themselves, but the voice in which they'd been spoken.

He'd experimented enough with his Parseltongue skill to know how to differentiate between when someone was speaking to him in English and when they were speaking Parseltongue, and Harry had heard the voices of snakes before, enough to differentiate between them.

That voice he had just heard had a rumbling quality to it, as much as a high-pitched hissing could rumble. He'd only heard that in the larger variety of snakes. Even the largest snakes though, Harry had once heard a twenty foot reticulated python, had never had a voice anywhere as rumbling as what he'd just heard though, so whatever it was, it was _much_ larger than twenty feet.

Harry's brow was creased with worry. "It looks like I'll be looking up magical snakes soon." He muttered. He knew, he just _knew_, that whatever he had heard would cause issues this year, like the Philosopher's Stone had the previous year. Maybe he was being paranoid, but he thought this might be his 'test' this year.


	10. Do Not Do This At Home

AN: Well, this is chapter ten. The next chapter will deal with the deathday party, the initial opening of the chamber, and Harry trying to figure out what the 'Horror Within' could be. I really don't see him working it out to truly be all that difficult, and I find it laughable that, in canon, Hermione is the _only_ one smart enough to do so. Yeah, Rowling really set off my bullshit detector with that one. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I wonder if any of you can figure out the reason why something happens in here.

Beta'd by: NIX'S WARDEN

Chapter 10 - Do Not Do This At Home

"Right, now that you can feel your magic, remember everything I taught you about forces. There's gravity, trying to pull it down to the earth, there's the air resistance, there's the wind itself, there's the force needed to hold it together, there's your magic being used as a fuel to keep it around, to make it light up." Harry explained to Blaise and Daphne.

He was giving them a lesson on 'his' magic, and he was trying to get them to learn a basic shooting spell. Of course, they _could_ manage to create one, but now he was trying to push them towards creating two, and then maybe three. A regular human mind, without assistance from a device or training in how to think about multiple things at once, would probably reach its limit at three.

Harry watched carefully as both Blaise and Daphne sat cross-legged in front of him, their eyes closed. They both had a single shooting spell hovering in the air next to them, Blaise's was a dark blue colour and Daphne's was mint green. They'd both asked why their orbs were different colours, and why Harry's was a purplish-black colour.

Harry had told him that it was different for everyone, and most magic they would cast using 'his' Arithmancy would be in their personal magic colour. The only spells that Harry could cast that weren't in his magic colour were certain ones he had 'stolen' from others. The Starlight Breaker of Nanoha's was one, that spell would always come out pink.

Harry's attention was caught when a flickering orb of light began to appear next to Blaise's already existing shooting spell. It was unstable, and judging by the sweat on his brow it was using up a lot of focus and concentration, but Blaise _was _creating a second orb of magic.

Twenty minutes later, Blaise had two orbs in front of him, the second one having become much more stable, and Daphne had progressed to having a flicker of a second one every now and then. Harry called an end to the training session then, and he told the both of them not to practise without him around.

Mid-Childan magic used up a lot more mana than Terran spells did, and it was only due to their comparatively larger reserves that Mages could cast as much and frequently as they could. On the flip side, Terran spells were so difficult for Belkan and Mid-Childan style cores that they drained Mages and Knights of much more mana than Terran Wizards, meaning they exhausted themselves at about the same rate.

Daphne and Blaise both thanked him, before making their exits.

"You know, I think you might actually like teaching." A voice behind him spoke up. Turning around, Harry saw that Loki was there, the raven familiar having watched the entire tutoring session from up on an out of the way shelf.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Seeing as Mcgonagall's Animagus lessons tells me that I need to be 'honest' with myself, I think the emotion needs to be reclassified as pride." There was a slight note of self-disgust in his voice as he said that word. "I enjoy seeing people succeed because _I've _helped them. Loki, does that make me a bad person? Surely it says something about me that I like knowing I helped others become better."

Loki paused for a moment, and considered his words. "No, it doesn't make you a bad person. Hmm, how to explain this..." He thought about it for a moment. "You, of course, know of the phrase 'too much of a good thing is bad for you', I assume. Well, having too little of a bad thing is... bad for you? Worse? I'm not making sense am I?"

The raven familiar sighed and got his thoughts in order. "Greed is seen as a bad thing, it's one of the seven deadly sins of Christianity. Without greed, however, there would be no motivation to do anything. Let's look at capitalism and communism as examples. Communism, in theory, is amazing, but there is a single massive flaw in it, human nature. If a common street cleaner and a highly qualified doctor earn the same wage, then why would you put the effort into learning to be a doctor? In those sorts of situations, only those who are truly determined to be doctors would become them."

"Capitalism on the other hand," Isis said, walking in the door, having been informed of what was going on by Loki. "Means that, to get a good wage, you have to actually work for it. The more effort you put into something, the more you get out of it. You want a lot of money? Well, you better be prepared to earn it then! Greed is not a bad thing, so long as it is kept in check and not allowed to go out of control."

Isis sat down on a chair, pulling Harry into her lap. She hugged him close, and started talking again. "Lust is another of the seven sins, but that's not a bad thing either. Lust is what gets your attention, draws you in, makes you _want_ something." Isis warm breath ghosted across the back of Harry's neck, making the hairs there stand on end.

"Pride is a good thing." Loki wandered over and ruffled Harry's hair, making said boy glare at him. "Those that take pride in their work will always do better than those that do it because they have to. A proud teacher will always deliver their lesson in a way that will enthuse their students better than one that's simply killing time."

After checking for nearby magic, Reinforce left Harry's body and sat on the chair next to him. "The Book of Darkness was created from the Tome of the Night Sky. I am the largest remainder of the Tome, and when the Book of Darkness was created, I was angry. Was it wrong of me to be angry? They had taken something precious and turned it monstrous, something that I was a part of, and even now my name is cursed."

Harry looked over to Reinforce with confused eyes. "Cursed? Who is cursing your name?"

Reinforce shifted in her seat slightly, before blowing a stray lock of hair out of her face. "When we were at the Infinite Library, I... I looked up as much history of myself as I could. As the Book of Darkness, I completely wiped out dozens of worlds, and I would have destroyed even more if I hadn't been stopped in Uminari."

A tear appeared in the corner of Reinforce's eye, and Harry leaned over, still sat in Isis' lap, and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. Isis also hugged Reinforce, and shot a look at Loki, who shrugged his shoulders and also came over to join the group hug around the Unison Device.

"If I hadn't been stopped in Uminari, none of this would be possible. I would have killed everyone, Hayate, Nanoha, Fate, Isis, Loki... you." Harry suddenly found it a little difficult to breath as Reinforce nearly crushed his ribs with her tight embrace.

"I watched over Hayate and her knights from within the Tome, seeing her ordinary life be torn apart due to me, _me!_ I took her ability to walk, I took her health... I made things so difficult for her, and still she refused to stop smiling. In fact, the only time she really cried was when I said goodbye, when I thought I would be destroyed." She looked downcast at that, but her slightly red, tear-filled eyes locked onto Harry's own.

"I didn't die though, I ended up with you. Your life was worse than Hayate's. While she had lost her parents, just like you, she had a fairly comfortable life, she was provided for, she was kept safe. You, while you weren't in a wheelchair and didn't suffer bouts of ill health, were treated as scum, as if you didn't matter to anyone, and with you I can walk around on my own, feel the breeze against my own skin, see the sunset through my own eyes." Isis and Loki began to try and gently loosen Reinforce's hold on Harry as his face began to turn blue from lack of oxygen.

"It's no problem, Rein." Harry muttered when he managed to get some much needed air into his lungs. "If anything, you've done more for me than I have for you. I can only imagine what things would be like if you hadn't dropped in on me like you did, and I'm very happy with how things are now."

"Hehehe," Isis laughed slightly. "Looking at you two like that, one might be mistaken for thinking you're siblings with your similar features. Failing that, maybe lovers..." The unicorn familiar leered at the pair of them, causing both Reinforce and Harry to blush bright red. A flash of light and Isis found herself looking at an embarrassed unisoned Harry.

Loki chuckled lightly, before stopping for a second. "Wait a moment, you two. Before you knock some of the perversion out of Isis, I think I've noticed something." Harry and Isis looked at Loki. "When you unisoned just now, it was because both of you were feeling the same emotion, right? Also, you weren't thinking clearly, unless I'm mistaken. Perhaps your accidental unisons are happening due to the two of you feeling heightened emotions, and those emotions happening to coincide as well."

Isis pouted then, giving the unisoned Harry and Reinforce a look. "Also, when do we get to unison with Reinforce? We can _tell_ that she's compatible with Harry, and seeing as we're Harry's familiars, shouldn't she be compatible with us as well? I want some Rein time too, you know!"

Harry bopped Isis lightly on the head, before he and Reinforce cancelled their unison. Harry looked at the Unison Device with a curious expression on his face. "I've got nothing against trying it out, but it's Reinforce's choice whether she wants to unison with you or not."

Reinforce cocked her head to one side. "I don't mind trying it, though I will stipulate that I'm going to try it with Loki, _not_ the pervert, first." They ignored Isis cry of 'Hey! I'm only perverted towards you two!', and they looked towards Loki, seeing what he thought of the idea.

"Sure, I don't mind." Loki shrugged his shoulders. Given his speciality was stealth, there wasn't really much need for him to be unisoned with Reinforce, as she was essentially a power amplifier. There also wasn't much need for her too be unisoned with Isis either, as the unicorn specialised in healing and barriers, which were plenty strong already.

Reinforce got to her feet and dried her eyes with a tissue Harry had thoughtfully conjured for her. She knew what they were doing, distracting her from bad memories and trying to get her to focus on other things, to try and cheer her up, and she was grateful for it.

She stepped up to Loki and looked him in the eye. She could see that, despite his own curiosity about unisoning with her, he didn't really see it ever becoming necessary, and Reinforce agreed with him on that. Nevertheless, she was curious how compatible she'd be with him and Isis, so she was going through with it.

""Unison in."" They said together, as Reinforce sank into Loki's body. The changes became immediately apparent. The green detail on Loki's jacket turned a light blue colour, and his black hair turned blonde as well. His eyes, formerly green, were now red, but a shade or two darker than Reinforce's own eyes.

That was not what caught everyone's attention though. The instant that Reinforce and Loki had initiated the unison, Harry had collapsed to the floor. Isis, being the closest to him, panicked, but still tried to find out what was wrong. His breathing was laboured and ragged, his skin had become slick with sweat, and his eyes had shrank to pinpricks.

When Loki and Reinforce had completed the unison, Harry's ragged breath rapidly became shallower, until he was barely breathing at all. His pulse, that Isis felt, also slowed down, nearly to a standstill, and he began to scream. Not having much breath available, it wasn't a loud, harsh scream, but the sound of it chilled the bones of Isis and Loki.

Reinforce, panicking along with Isis and Loki, separated from the raven familiar, so that she might unison with Isis, boosting her healing abilities, but the instant she separated from Loki, Harry seemed to calm down immediately. That made them all pull up short for a moment.

Reinforce hesitantly laid a hand on Harry's chest and felt for his heartbeat. It wasn't difficult to find and, once it calmed down, it was beating in rhythm with her own heart. That caused her brow to crease. Just how connected were Harry and herself?

They could feel the emotions of each other. Okay, she'd initially written it off as simply knowing Harry so well that she _knew_ what he would be feeling, and vice versa as well, but that wasn't the case any more, especially as they could tell what the other was feeling even when they weren't in the same room.

Their magic was connected together. Okay, the Sorting Hat had said these 'Soul Bond' things were possible, and could often be familial in nature. Still, those sorts of bonds tended to rely on two people sharing similar blood, at the very least, but Harry and Reinforce weren't blood relatives of each other.

Their reaction time delay, though, was something else. Even the best and most compatible unisons ever still had a small delay, even if that delay was in the milliseconds. That wasn't the case with Harry and Reinforce though, their delay wasn't 'so close to zero it didn't matter', it _was_ zero.

Now, she finds that simply unisoning with someone other than Harry can have, seemingly, fatal repercussions for Harry. She had felt it, when she had connected to Loki, a tearing sensation within herself, like someone was literally ripping her heart into pieces, and while Loki and Isis were too busy panicking over Harry to notice it, both of their connections with Harry had begun to fade.

Did Harry nearly die just now? Merely by her unisoning with Loki, had she nearly killed Harry? Why? Why would that happen? Why would such a simple thing have such a major effect? _What_ had just happened? What had caused it? There were so many questions running around in Reinforce's mind and she was worried.

xxxxx

Harry came to slowly. He blinked, the room coming into focus. He was back in the Head Boy suite, Isis was on his left, Loki at the foot of the bed, and Reinforce was on his right. The Unison Device and unicorn familiar both had a rather tight hold of Harry, as if they thought he would disappear if they let go.

He tried to remember back to the last thing he could remember, and all that came to mind was pain. He remembered the whole idea of Reinforce unisoning with Loki. He remembered seeing her step up to him. He remembered them initiating the unison.

After that, his entire world had consisted of crippling, all-consuming pain. It was far worse than when Dudley had poured acid over his head when he had first met Reinforce, far worse. He had learned that his accidental magic had initially numbed his face, lowering the pain he felt, and his high tolerance for pain had also made it more bearable. Then, his magic had tried to 'fight off' the acid, attempting to 'burn' it away, but this had merely resulted in him getting worse scars than he would have if the acid had simply been washed off.

"You're awake now, are you, master?" Loki asked, keeping his voice quiet as he could see that Isis and Reinforce were both still asleep, though Reinforce did seem to be starting to stir. Really, it was ridiculous how connected those two were, affect one in any way and there would probably be a similar result with the other, no matter how far apart they were.

"What happened?" Harry asked.

Loki shrugged his shoulders. "We don't know. When Reinforce started to unison with me, you... well, you started to die, master." The raven familiar decided to be blunt about things. While it was in his nature to trick, deceive, and manipulate others if there was a reason for it, Harry was his creator, his master, and the one he was loyal to. He would never lie to Harry.

"Harry..." Reinforce mumbled drowsily, before she yawned and rubbed at her eyes, being very cute in Harry's opinion. "Harry!" She cried loudly, throwing her arms around him and, once again, crushing him in her embrace. Seriously, where did Rein get all that arm strength from?

Of course, Reinforce's loud exclamation and the movement on the bed proved enough to wake Isis up. Never one to miss being affectionate with Harry, Isis also joined in with hugging the stuffing out of the twelve year old boy. Surprisingly, she kept her hands relatively tame, and didn't take advantage of Harry's distracted state.

"I'm okay, I'm okay." Harry insisted, tying to calm the two females down.

"No, you're not!" Reinforce snapped at him, her expression going from relieved to serious in an instant. "You almost _died_, just by me trying to unison with Loki. From now on, I'm not unisoning with anyone but you, we know that works as we've already done it, I'm not risking you, Harry."

"Whatever you want, Rein. It's always been your choice, it's not like I would, or even could, _force_ you to unison with anyone." Harry hugged her back. "It's nice to feel wanted, makes me feel special."

"You _are_ special Harry, to me, and these two as well." Reinforce told him.

"You are _very _special to me, Harry." Isis purred, her hands beginning to wander where they shouldn't.

"I hope you don't mind me being so... physically affectionate as them two, master. Still, you are special to me as well." Loki's voice was laced with amusement. Harry just gave him a flat look, which had the raven familiar chuckling lightly.

xxxxx

"Of course, if a vampire was here right now, I could show you _exactly_ how I dealt with that one on the Mediterranean cruise! I had been relaxing after my defeat of the Wagga Wagga Werewolf, and thought that an around the world trip would do me good, and of course I was also doing my good friend Lord Strine a favour – poor bloke couldn't manage a trip like that at his age, and he did need someone to represent him – when it happened..." Lockhart went on to describe the 'fight' in great detail. Honestly, Harry would say it almost sounded choreographed.

A dreamy sigh from most of the girls in the room had Harry attempting to bash his brains out against the wall, attempting because Isis was between him and the wall and she was proving adept at... distracting Harry. Honestly, Harry was on the verge of going to Flitwick and asking whether he could skip Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons, it wasn't like he was learning anything after all!

He turned to Loki. "What do you think the chances of me getting a hold of a vampire are?" He asked. "I could hide them in his room and _then_ we'll see just what he can do against one of them. I am not buying for one minute that he honestly did any of the things he's claimed he's done."

"On acquiring a vampire, that depends. If we throw your name in there, I'm sure we'll get a bite on the hook, but without, it might be a bit more difficult finding a vampire that would do as you ask. As for whether or not he did what he says he's done, what makes you think he hasn't done those things?" Loki muttered out of the corner of his mouth. The raven familiar was keeping his attention on Lockhart, but his eyes had an unfocused look in them, a definite sign that he wasn't paying much attention to the blonde.

"Oh!" As Isis squealed, Harry felt a wave of relief that he'd had the sense of mind to cast a few privacy charms around himself, Isis, an Loki, as well as a muffling spell to quieten and distort what they were saying. "Get a cute vampire chick! All tight, black leather, _oozing_ sexuality, willing to... _experiment_, and maybe just a bit kinky..." She was stopped by Harry placing his hand over her mouth.

He gave Isis a small smile. "I was thinking about getting a hold of a vampire to scare and mess with Lockhart, not because of any suppressed sexual desire that you seem to believe I have." He ignored her mutter of 'Yes, I know! When will you ravish me?' as he turned back to Loki.

"The vampire thing was a joke, Loki. Getting a vampire to hide out in Lockhart's room or office is going a little too far. With what might be in there, the vampire might end up traumatised for life, and I would never be able to handle having that on my conscience." Both Harry and Loki smirked at that.

"As for disbelieving Lockhart, it's because of his utter incompetence. From what I can gather, his charm-work is at about OWL level, maybe an EE, but that's the only subject he seems _any_ good at at all. His creature knowledge is rather incomplete, his hexes, jinxes, and curses are, well, weak. I haven't seen him use any transfiguration, but seeing as his wand is made of cherry, it's unlikely to be something he particularly excels at, cherry wands are suppose to be good for charms after all, an almost opposite to transfiguration." He told Loki, who offered up no argument.

Harry felt a scrunched up ball of parchment hit him. His eyes flickered down to where the ball had landed, casually summoning it to his hand, where he unfolded and read the message on it. 'Can't you take over the class again?' it read.

Harry looked over his shoulder, seeing, a desk behind and across the aisle, Stephen Cornfoot, Dean Thomas, and Seamus Finnegan. All three of them were looking at Harry with pleading eyes. Harry shook his head, casting a 'Tempus' spell, showing them the lesson was almost over anyway.

As he turned around, Harry's eyes flickered over all of the students in the class. Idly, Harry wondered whether Lockhart had some sort of Rare Skill centred around charming females, as almost all of the girls in the class were sighing dreamily at the fop. Even Hermione, book-loving, rule-abiding, straight-laced, slightly pretentious Hermione, was giving the man a misty-eyed, adoring look.

The boys, on the other hand, were doing one of three things. Either they were keeping their eyes on Lockhart, and looking either bored out of their wits or half-asleep, Flicking through books for subjects other than DADA, a few of them even seemed to be catching up on homework, or they were otherwise idling away their time, some by staring into space and some by playing games.

"Do you think we might want to keep an eye out on Lockhart?" Harry muttered to Isis. "I must admit, it's rather creepy the way that he seems to bask in the attention of so many under-age girls, or do you think the fop bats for the other team?"

Isis let out a giggle, before she looked down at Harry after glancing at Lockhart. "Second years might be a bit young, actually, I'd say to check fourth year and up. A guy with as much influence as he does, as a celebrity, might be quite the fine catch for a teenage girl who was smitten by the whole thing. There's also the possibility that Lockhart _is_ using his fame to get in the skirts of the older students." She sounded rather serious at the end of that, until she started nuzzling Harry that was. "Don't worry, I'm a one-guy unicorn, you have no reason to be concerned about me."

Harry let Isis bury her face into his neck and rub herself against him, his entire focus was now on Lockhart. Harry then remembered something, and turned to Loki. "Didn't you put listening charms and the like in all of the dormitories?" He asked.

"Yes, I did." Loki replied. "It was a bit more difficult doing the girls' rooms as they're all protected, but being in my raven form allowed me to pass. It seems that the barriers only stop human males, not animals, I guess it's because a girl might have a pet that's male, or something, but it does leave a hole in their defences for animagi."

"That's useful to know." Harry said, before he felt Isis arms wrap around himself. He looked over, into the eyes of Isis which were dancing with mischief.

"Oh? Does my little Harry want to sneak into the girls' dormitories? Don't worry, master, Isis will take care of your _every_ need, you don't have to go somewhere else looking for companionship." Harry idly wondered how the class and professor would be reacting to Isis' advances on himself if he hadn't cast those privacy and notice-me-not spells.

"Don't worry, Isis, I'm not about to sneak off to some random girl for a cuddle or anything of the sort. Your position as my official snuggler is not under threat, so don't despair." Harry rolled his eyes at the unicorn as he spoke, attempting to keep his voice level, but a hint of amusement did shine through.

"Oh, I am glad." She purred in response, as she squeezed Harry tightly.

For his part, Harry just kept an eye on the 'Tempus' he'd cast, counting down the few minutes left in the lesson.

xxxxx

"Well, the weather seems to have taken a turn for the worse." Harry muttered, glancing out of a nearby window.

Loki looked out, his sharp eyes seeing something that Harry hadn't bothered even trying to see. "Is that the Gryffindor Quidditch team out on the pitch? Well, I guess that I can commend their determination if nothing else, playing in this weather is undoubtedly... unpleasant." That was the word he'd settled on, though he'd personally use something a bit stronger than 'unpleasant', it was most certainly not weather _he_ would fly in.

"Hmm?" Harry's eyes flickered up and out of the window, trying to see what Loki was looking at. Harry's eyes, however, were not as good as Loki's, who had truly phenomenal eyesight, so he decided to just take his word for it. Honestly, he could believe that Oliver Wood, Quidditch fanatic that he is, would drag his team out into weather like this, he was pretty obsessed with the sport.

"Hello, sir Nicholas." Harry greeted a ghost as his eyes flickered forwards again, catching sight of said spectral being. Harry was rather curious about ghosts, and he really wanted to know whether their existence constituted as evidence of any kind for the existence of life after death.

"Hello to you too, young Harry." Nick greeted back. Harry was one of the few students to not refer to the Gryffindor ghost by the moniker 'Nearly-Headless Nick', as the boy seriously doubted the man wanted to be constantly reminded of the humiliating way in which he'd died. Nick had also picked up on the fact that Harry didn't like being referred to as Potter, and called him Harry instead.

"Is something the matter?" Harry asked, seeing that the ghost looked somewhat agitated.

"Oh, nothing much. It's just that I have, again, been rejected from the Headless Hunt. It seems like half an inch of skin is too damn much for 'Mr Properly-Decapitated Podmore'!" Nick grumbled, pulling out something that looked to be the ghostly equivalent of parchment. Harry's curiosity was aroused at the sight.

"Oh, really?" He asked. "Isn't there something that can affect ghosts? Maybe a special sort of sword or something that can finish the job?" He couldn't help himself any more, he asked a different question. "How is that parchment 'ghostly' anyway?"

Nick chuckled at that last question. "Ever the Ravenclaw, aren't you? You should try talking to Helena once in a while, as long as you don't talk about who she is, she might get along quite well with you and answer some questions, she has the same curious streak you do." The ghost gently shook his head, making sure not to dislodge it.

"The paper is easy to do with the help of the living, all you have to do is ritualistically 'sacrifice' the parchment. The animals the skin for it came from were alive, after all, so they hold the 'potential' to become ghosts, even if they don't have the fear of death to actually manage it alone. As for a sword," He sighed "I don't know of anything capable of harming the dead, I'm afraid." Nick paused for a moment, a thoughtful look on his face.

"You know, Harry, my death day is coming up soon, Halloween to be specific. I don't suppose... well, would you be interested in coming to it?" He asked cautiously. "I can understand that you'd rather be at the feast, absurd idea really, but I thought I'd invite you regardless-"

Harry cut the ghost off from his ramblings. "I'll come, sir Nicholas, I'll come. While everyone else celebrates Halloween, it's not a day that I remember fondly, and the company of you and your other guests might suit me more than the boisterous students that will be in the Great Hall."

"I'll come." Loki added.

"I'll follow Harry wherever he goes." Isis also chipped in.

"I might even have one more." Harry said, referring to Reinforce.

"Excellent, my dear boy, excellent." Nick smiled.

"Just make sure there's some food there that's edible to the living, I've heard about how ghosts let food rot to give it a stronger flavour." Harry said, which Nick readily agreed to. Imagine, Harry Potter at his death day party! Oh, he would be the talk of the county in the ghostly circles!

As Nick floated away through a wall, Harry looked at Isis and Loki. "Well, it looks like we have something planned for next week. I'm sure it will be interesting if nothing else, imagine what all of those ghosts could tell us about times gone by."

Loki chuckled. "That's assuming they're not all as bad as Binns at putting people asleep."

Harry snorted at that, and the three of them wandered off to the Ravenclaw Head Boy suite, Harry wanted to continue experimenting with converting analogue memories into digital data that his device could understand. Loki would be doing his own thing, and Isis would probably try and coax a reaction out of Harry.

All in all, it was just another ordinary day.


End file.
